How many people in a 250 year old Graveyard?

[jokamachi]

How many?


As many as you want.

 

[Henrix]

Space is generally a restricted resource, especially in the form of ground that is (more or less easy to dig in) - it's the primary wealth of an agricultural community we're talking about.

So graves get reused. You often dig up the old bones (remember that scene in Hamlet?) to make place for new graves.
Exactly how long time they are allowed to lie in the ground varies a lot. As does what you do with the old bones.

 

[Odhanan]

Just trying to get a sense of how many people would be buried in a 250 year old graveyard if the population of the town was approximately 150.

I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 or so, but it seems a little high to me.

any ideas?

That's the size of Vendresse, my family village (200 inhabitants, nearly all more or less related over time) which stands near the French city of Charleville-Mezieres. The graveyard has a few tombs dating back to the early 1800's. Most of these concessions are now very badly damaged (some monuments wide open to the elements - I remember a particular one from when I was a kid: the marble had been cracked by lightning, and one could see the coffin by peeking inside).

To answer to your question, there are in Vendresse around 200 tombs. But it will depend largely on the state of the town, and how its population inflated or deflated over these 250 years. In the case of Vendresse, it remained nearly the same.

 

[Stormborn]

OP,

You want Rolling the Bones: A Graveyard Supplement by Donna K. Fitch. Available for justa few dollars in PDF. It has all you need for designing a cemetary based on size and age and use.

 

[Halivar]

I say 500 graves.

Split them evenly between skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghasts, bodaks, and devourers.

Add 3 to 6 adventurers, shake vigorously, and serve.

 

[Umbran]

Just trying to get a sense of how many people would be buried in a 250 year old graveyard if the population of the town was approximately 150.

Has the population of the town been pretty constant for all 250 years? I'd consider that a long, long time for a population to be so static. Recall that the USA is only 230 years old....

Over that kind of time period, I'd expect simple population growth to be less important than history - wars, immigration, plagues, and so on will have major impact.

 

[Rabelais]

Most of the population in Taren's Ferry is human, some demihuman. Outward migration can keep the overall population low.

thanks for the assist everybody 500 is lowish, but not out of the question.

 

[Drowbane]

(sarcastic)

I say 500 graves.

Split them evenly between skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghasts, bodaks, and devourers.

Add 3 to 6 adventurers, shake vigorously, and serve.

As a player of one of the 2nd lvl PCs from Taren's Ferry I'd just like to say... thanks

edit: cause Eric's grandmother wouldn't approve of my actual thoughts (hehe)

 

[Halivar]

As a player of one of the 2nd lvl PCs from Taren's Ferry I'd just like to say... thanks

edit: cause Eric's grandmother wouldn't approve of my actual thoughts (hehe)

You're not looking at the big picture: just think of the experience and loot!

 

[JustKim]

A lot of folks seem to be assuming that the village has had a population of 150 for the past 250 years, but it just wouldn't happen that way unless all 150 of them were male elves.

I'll show you why this is so unrealistic.

A population's growth rate is a factor of its birth rate (births plus immigrants) minus its death rate (deaths plus emigrants) in a given year, expressed as a percentage. In the real world this percentage is about 1.5% on average. D&D has two advantages over the real world in terms of growth rate: first, it's modeled after the dark ages where birth control doesn't really exist, education is primative and children are wealth rather than an expense. Second, it allows for all of the conveniences that resulted in exponential growth of humanity following the dark ages. It's not at all outlandish to say that a D&D community has a 8% growth rate. There's no way you could ever fit your described town into that growth rate, so let's say your growth rate is 1.5% instead.

The Rule of 70 says that every 70 years, divided by the percentage growth of your community (70/1.5 or about 50), a community's population doubles (It's a factor of lifespan and fertility, but should be identical for humans in a D&D setting). This means that every 50 years, there were half as many people in that 250 year old town.
50 years ago, there were 80 people in your town.
100 years ago, there were 40 people in your town.
150 years ago, there were 20 people in your town.
200 years ago, there were 10 people in your town.
Remember the figure from above: your birth rate is 1.5% greater than your death rate. That means that there are roughly 148 people buried in your cemetery.

If you wanted to go with a more realistic 8% growth rate, your town could only be around 50 years old to have 150 people, barring some horrible catastrophe. An 8% growth rate left unchecked means that..
250 years ago, there were 2 people in your town and they were very ornery.
241 years ago, there were 4 people in your town.
232 years ago, there were 8 people in your town.
196 years ago, there were 64 people in your town.
160 years ago, there were 512 people in your town.
124 years ago, there were 4,096 people in your town.
88 years ago, there were 32,768 people in your town.
52 years ago, there were 262,144 people in your town.
Today there are approximately 8,388,608 people in your town and countless millions buried in your cemetery.