How big are your cities?

[Psion]

Re: depends...

The cities here are a bit smallish by current FRPG standards with few of the cities having more than 20K-40K inhabitants. The exception is Devonshire, the Jewel of the isles. A major city for international trade, it sports close to 100K in populace.

That's actually pretty normal/sensible by D&D standards... both the 2e WBG and the 3e demographics rules have a similar upper limit.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

This has been true for all of my homebrew worlds thus far.

I prefer frontier worlds with a few large cities and many small, independent settlements. With the alarming frequency of wandering monster attacks in your average D&D world, it is a small miracle countries could exist!

To the contrary - wandering monsters are an excellent reason to band together, create nations, and build up a standing and professional army. Most humans can't match the monsters in terms of sheer ferocity, so organizing themselves is their best strategy - since that's something the monsters aren't good at.

"United we stand, divided we fall..."

Communities, or at least the small ones, are self sufficient. This also means that they are fairly ill equipped and all grownups must be able to fight in case someone or something decides to take your humble belongings and your life.

So you want to huddle in your home and wait for the Big Bad Monsters to come out of the forest? Suit yourself. Personally, I say we band together with a few neighboring villages and burn the forest down! That'll teach them.

Sure, some villagers will probably die in this operation, but they can find consolation in the fact that their descendants won't have to fear the Darkness anymore...

 

[Tonguez]

In my current campaign (Mythic Polynesia) I voted hamlets of less than 100 but this is somewhat misleading as I follow a tribal rather than urban model for population distributions.

In Polynesia tribes of say 2 - 5000 occupied defined districts of say a 20 mile radius which may have been a portion of an island, a whole island or a group of small islands. The population would however be spread around in small clan-villages (hamlets 100 - 300)), family camps (20 - 50 people) and even individual households. The people were mobile within the district and could occupy more than one hamlet/camp within a single year (as they went from Kumara harvest in one season to the 'Ulu harvest in the next). Between these various settlements would be extensive plantations, gardens, natural rainforest and scrublands and of course the ubiquitous lagoon and reef which the whole tribe shared.

The tribe might also maintain a fortified Pa (think City of Refuge) usally the village (300 -500 people) of the ruling Chief but during times of crisis it could easily accomodate the full 5000 members of the tribe.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I am sorry, but it must be done . . . It is not the size that counts.

Blasphemer! Size does matter!



Seriously, really big cities make a fascinating background for adventures. Nothing says "low-level" quite like the realisation that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the city that have all the same dreams as you do. Conversely, nothing says "high-level" quite like shaping such a metropolis to your every whim...

 

[Desdichado]

I totally prefer at least a few very large metropolitan areas. I like urban adventure and intrigue much more than wandering monsters and dungeon crawls.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Depends heavily on what Time Frame IMHCW, but at the later periods, one can expect to find heavily settled regions with populations in the low millions and cities of anywhere from 30,000 to 200,000, with those over 100k being infrequent at best.

In the earlier periods, a city of 25,000 is a huge metropolis. Many "nations" don't have that many people in total!

Rome was huge, Constantinople was huge, the various Italian city-states were nothing to be sneezed at - and then there's always China if you want big cities.

Don't judge the Middle Ages by Northern and Central Europe - these count as "frontier regions" for most of the period.

 

[CCamfield]

I downloaded S. John Ross' article and was looking at it and the DMG demographics rules this weekend.

In reference to Ross' article, I'll point out that many of the ancient Greeks liked living communally, so they would live in villages rather than isolated farmsteads, even if that meant they had to walk out to their fields every day.

Do you guys use the gp limit rules as defined in the DMG? I have a hard time accepting that anything with a population of more than 25k is a "metropolis" with the best possible, err, shopping possibilities.

Then again, this world is a bit more like the ancient/near east, where as Paradigm mentioned cities could be bigger. I haven't quite come to grips with how many people would be in the countryside, though.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Do you guys use the gp limit rules as defined in the DMG? I have a hard time accepting that anything with a population of more than 25k is a "metropolis" with the best possible, err, shopping possibilities.

For Urbis, with its vastly larger cities, I've redifined city sizes and gp limits. You can find the table here.

A "small metropolis" in Urbis starts at 500,000 people - and there are three size categories above it...

 

[Tonguez]

For Urbis, with its vastly larger cities, I've redifined city sizes and gp limits. You can find the table here.

I've been wondering about the Historic 'How' of large cities as in 'How did they get started' and 'How do they maintain themselves'

It would seem that the Mega cities (over 1 million people) would need some kind of rationale other than the King built it in order to attract people into it especially once the monster threat was undercontrol (and the area no longer frontier).

In the past I have had only 3 cities with over a Million people -

Ti'en - the City of Heaven capital of the Mongol Inspired, Continent-spanning 'Yuan Empire' in which Torgul Khan dwells in Splendour surrounded by his Khitaian Bereaucracy

Bishnagar - the Center of the World Center of both the East-West 'Silk Road' and the North-South 'Caravan Trails' a City built on its dominance of International Trade
and
Anziko the Beacon of Light Capital of the Empire of Anziko based in my antidiluvean medieval Africa setting of Ko-Anziko (back when the Congo basin was still a gigantic freshwater sea).

any other city I have ever run has been a few thousand at most I consider 30000 to be huge....

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've been wondering about the Historic 'How' of large cities as in 'How did they get started' and 'How do they maintain themselves'

It would seem that the Mega cities (over 1 million people) would need some kind of rationale other than the King built it in order to attract people into it especially once the monster threat was undercontrol (and the area no longer frontier).

Which is where, in Urbis, the Nexus Towers come in. The one with the biggest city is the one with the biggest reservoir of life energy. The one with the biggest reservoir of life energy has potentially the most magical energies available at his command.

And the one with the most magical energies available at his command... wins.