BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
jgbrowning said:
And Eberron doesn't have any square mountain ranges.
Middle Earth: The only planet where tectonic plates are created with a level and straight edge.
Khorvaire:Two Problems
- Thread starter mythusmage
- Start date
And Eberron doesn't have any square mountain ranges.
Middle Earth: The only planet where tectonic plates are created with a level and straight edge.
RangerWickett said:
Simple, some people are asking the population of Italy to run Russia. Can't work, you need a certain population minimum to maintain nations of a certain size at a certain level of technology. A United States with only 30 million people would be a far different place than it is now.
Keith mentioned oasis of civilization separated by wilderness. Yet the Five Nations are supposed to be feudal nations. Don't work that way. Given his scheme the Five Nations would be confederations, with one city-state having pride of place over the others. If the whole thing didn't fall apart into independent city states in the first place.
Having thought upon this for some time an alternative has occurred to me. Khorvaire is too big. Instead of 5,000 miles east to west, make it 500 miles east to west. Still underpopulated, but not disastrously so.
Why does it matter? Because people have noticed. People will noticed. When it's a week's travel time between thorps people are going to notice. They will ask embarrassing questions of you. It damages the versimilitude of the setting.
A Thrane that's 50 miles across east to west works a lot better than a Thrane that's 500 miles across. (I like Thrane, sue me).
BTW, Keith, I fuss because I love. Now stop fidgeting, you'll wrinkle your suit.
jgbrowning
Hero
I think the main issue is that many of the typical D&D tropes are basically incompatable with reality. 
So something has to give...
joe b.
So something has to give...joe b.
RangerWickett
Legend
I suppose it's just that most people don't know what a necessary population density is, but we do know that rivers flowing uphill is weird. If I told the average person playing in Oriental Adventures, "Why were your characters talking to the daimyo like that? You used the word 'you'. You can't say 'you' in Japanese! It's rude. Your characters should've been executed," then most people would be like, "Dude, it's just a game, and I don't speak Japanese."
I mean, complain all you like about the flavor of the setting, or how certain rules are broken, or how it doesn't make sense that the Lightning Rail has never exploded by running into a cow that got stuck on the tracks. And if Keith Baker had said he was a medieval scholar of population statistics, then sure, criticize him. But he was hired to create an engaging setting that was fun to play in, and I think expecting him, or us, to know what the proper population density of a continent should be requires a bit of, "Dude, it's just a game."
I mean, complain all you like about the flavor of the setting, or how certain rules are broken, or how it doesn't make sense that the Lightning Rail has never exploded by running into a cow that got stuck on the tracks. And if Keith Baker had said he was a medieval scholar of population statistics, then sure, criticize him. But he was hired to create an engaging setting that was fun to play in, and I think expecting him, or us, to know what the proper population density of a continent should be requires a bit of, "Dude, it's just a game."
Derulbaskul
Adventurer
RangerWickett said:
"Lose" and "loose" is a bad one, yes, but I still think the inability of 90% of messageboard users to use "it's" (this is NOT the possessive form of "it") and "its" (this is the possessive form of it and it does NOT have an apostrophe) correctly is a far more egregious sin.
In fact, I think this thread would be better used for improving the manifold spelling, syntax, punctuation and grammatical errors that are like a plague here. This is far more important than the population detail of some fantasy world (which is spelt with one B and two Rs).
jgbrowning
Hero
RangerWickett said:
Close, one however is a physical reality, the other is cultural reality that the characters would be aware of. In otherwords, one's an issue in world-building, the other's one of player vrs. PC knowledge.
Tomaytoe, tomahtoe.
For me, population disparities are like water running uphill. To me, complaining about how the listed population doesn't work is no different than complaining about a river that flows over a mountain, it's a piece of data to store and consider when building my own worlds. To expect a creator to make no mistakes is very unreasonable, but what constitutes a mistake to one person isn't important to many others. It looks like Keith was more focused on the part of the world (setting, style, action) that more people are interested in. And rightly so, I think.joe b.
"Gee, that river's running uphill. Is it magic? If it is, what's the cause?"
"Gee, there aint many people around. How do they communicate? Is it magic? If it is, how is it done?"
Folks, we are a social people. We need company. If the humans of Eberron don't need that much company, then they really aint human.
We need contact with others. Both those within the community, and those outside the community. Without that contact we get strange. We are so used to having ready contact with literally millions of people we have no real idea what true isolation is like. The closest anybody comes in American society is someone kept in isolated confinement, and even then he has occasional contact with somebody else.
My sin is that I'm asking people to think about things they'd much rather not think about. I'm pointing out the Emperor's cheap banana hammock, when he should be wearing a pricey one. (He's the Emperor after all, he should care about his (minimalist) clothing.)
Why does it matter? Because it bugs our sense of rightness. It flies in the face of our knowledge of ourselves. An innate, nigh instinctual sense of what makes a human a human. Not something you learn in school or through experience, but something about us that makes us human. Something that we can't really explain, but which we notice when it is wrong or missing.
We are social animals. We like to live in relatively closs proximity to others. Any setting that does not acknowledge that has problems, and this includes Eberron.
"Gee, there aint many people around. How do they communicate? Is it magic? If it is, how is it done?"
Folks, we are a social people. We need company. If the humans of Eberron don't need that much company, then they really aint human.
We need contact with others. Both those within the community, and those outside the community. Without that contact we get strange. We are so used to having ready contact with literally millions of people we have no real idea what true isolation is like. The closest anybody comes in American society is someone kept in isolated confinement, and even then he has occasional contact with somebody else.
My sin is that I'm asking people to think about things they'd much rather not think about. I'm pointing out the Emperor's cheap banana hammock, when he should be wearing a pricey one. (He's the Emperor after all, he should care about his (minimalist) clothing.
)Why does it matter? Because it bugs our sense of rightness. It flies in the face of our knowledge of ourselves. An innate, nigh instinctual sense of what makes a human a human. Not something you learn in school or through experience, but something about us that makes us human. Something that we can't really explain, but which we notice when it is wrong or missing.
We are social animals. We like to live in relatively closs proximity to others. Any setting that does not acknowledge that has problems, and this includes Eberron.
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RangerWickett
Legend
But Myth', no DM is gonna run Eberron and say, "You enter the city of towers, and you walk through its empty streets for ten minutes before you finally see a person. He leans out the window and says, 'Wow, sure is crowded, ain't it?'"
I'll bet dollars to d20s that they didn't intend to have the world be underpopulated. They just didn't do their research because a quick eyeball said, "Eh, eighty million people sounds about right."
I suppose the best example I can think of is when I read comics and then talk about them with my ex-girlfriend, who majored in comic art in college. I'll say things like, "The story was a little weak, and really, do they have to have so much cleavage?" and she'll say things like, "I can't believe he had that guy facing left in the top panel on page 6. And then there was that tangent where her sword looked like it was stabbing the wall."
But no, that's not even right. Because I might notice that the art looks a little funny, and just not be able to describe why. This situation would be more like if she read a comic and then said, "They obviously decided to use XYZ ink instead of QVC ink, because look here, see how the light reflects from this angle but not when you look straight down at it? And the credits page forgot to mention the secondary anti-alias programmer. I hate it when they do that."
I would then respond and say, in a very stupid sounding voice, "There were pretty pictures." I admit that my knowledge of the subject is not as great as hers, but I'd rather discuss the story of the comic than the production process.
Likewise, worrying about population densities, when you could be worrying about plot stuff, just seems a bit silly to me. Then again, I've replied to this thread 4 times now, so I'm a little silly too. I'll just say that I get frustrated with people saying things suck. I want to see a little more optimism for a change. Maybe I'm just in a snarky mood, and am only seeing the criticism.
I'll bet dollars to d20s that they didn't intend to have the world be underpopulated. They just didn't do their research because a quick eyeball said, "Eh, eighty million people sounds about right."
I suppose the best example I can think of is when I read comics and then talk about them with my ex-girlfriend, who majored in comic art in college. I'll say things like, "The story was a little weak, and really, do they have to have so much cleavage?" and she'll say things like, "I can't believe he had that guy facing left in the top panel on page 6. And then there was that tangent where her sword looked like it was stabbing the wall."
But no, that's not even right. Because I might notice that the art looks a little funny, and just not be able to describe why. This situation would be more like if she read a comic and then said, "They obviously decided to use XYZ ink instead of QVC ink, because look here, see how the light reflects from this angle but not when you look straight down at it? And the credits page forgot to mention the secondary anti-alias programmer. I hate it when they do that."
I would then respond and say, in a very stupid sounding voice, "There were pretty pictures." I admit that my knowledge of the subject is not as great as hers, but I'd rather discuss the story of the comic than the production process.
Likewise, worrying about population densities, when you could be worrying about plot stuff, just seems a bit silly to me. Then again, I've replied to this thread 4 times now, so I'm a little silly too. I'll just say that I get frustrated with people saying things suck. I want to see a little more optimism for a change. Maybe I'm just in a snarky mood, and am only seeing the criticism.
I raised this question early in the "Ask Keith Baker" thread, and am rather surprised at the number of other people who have taken an interest in a somewhat trivial tidbit. I think the numbers are low, but more on the order of a factor of 2, not the type of numbers others are suggesting. I have no idea where someone gets the idea that the 40 people per square mile is some magical minimum number. The USA didn't hit this threshold until 1950. For a good comparison, the USA had a population density of about 5 people/square mile from 1790 to 1820. Based on the conversation in this thread, it is a wonder the USA still exists today. Compare this with Eberron at a population density of about 2 (give or take, as it is hard to get the area all that accurately) and I really don't see a huge problem with the Eberron numbers, especially if you take Keith's advice and double to include children.
(US population data from: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html )
Dwilgar
(US population data from: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html )
Dwilgar
jgbrowning
Hero
RangerWickett said:
Just to clairify on my end, crticism doesn't mean something sucks, it just means that this part of something isn't accurate, or it could be more accurate. It's part of the process of continually getting better at what we do. I don't think Eberron sucks because it's population is off. It would suck if that was one of many problems, but it's one of its few problems.
I understand your feelings though as it often seems that people nitpick on relatively unimportant matters and that doing so often appears to be part of a larger attack. As an author, criticism (well, at least relatively accurate criticism) is something that's generally good, as its another thing I now know about that I didn't before. Bad crticism is just ignored. What's good and what's bad? Well, I make that part up as I go....
But with all that in mind, the same general sentiment can be reversed to those who belittle criticizers. Just because I like something, doesn't mean that parts of it don't suck or that the people who are bothered by a particular aspect of a world are the strange ones to be ridiculed when they point these things out. I always find it important for me to remember that often the negative tone I see in other's posts appears hightened because of the things I like, as opposed to any real negativity. It's much easier to tell in person than through text.
joe b.
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