Khorvaire:Two Problems

[mythusmage]

My personal pet hate is PC's instead of PCs.

glass.

Now that you mention it. I mean, how would the writer know what belonged to Pirate Cat and what didn't, unless PC informed him? And doesn't PC get a bit miffed at some of the things ascribed to him?

 

[S'mon]

Game demographics - ever since Gary Gygax created the Flanaess (and probably before), game designers have been creating worlds with far too few people in far too big areas, so Eberron is hardly alone in this. I don't own it, but it sounds like the best solution might be to reduce the map scale rather than increasing the population by the x10 you'd need to get a plausible density - this is true of many published worlds, including Midnight's Eredane (which I've been playing in). If you halve the map scale that's a x4 density, still very low; 1/4 gives x16, which would instantly give European-level populations. Or halve the scale and x2 or x4 the populations... ta-da!

I think it's silly to deny that the listed figures aren't plausible even in a fantasy world, OTOH it's not hard to fix and I don't think too much should be made of it.

 

[ironmani]

And the folks of Khorvaire don't have the technolgy Alaskans have. Not even a telegraph.

But your also assuming that the average farmer in Eberron whats to talk to his neighbor everyday to chat about the weather. Back in the 14th century, you didnt have too much contact with neighbor. I honestly dont see a problem with the population. Almost every game I've run or played in, if we where going from Point A to Point B, it happened. Sure we camped overnight, but it never crossed our minds about what was in between. :: shrug :: I dont know, it just doesnt concern me. :\

 

[fredramsey]

Hey all!

I don't intend to be too concerned about this, I'm afraid

<SNIP>.

Nor should you! This is perhaps the most pointless thread I've seen in a long time.

Read your favorite fantasy novel. I'm betting the characters spend days, weeks, even months getting from place to place. That's one of the very cool things I like about Eberron. There are large areas that are unpopulated and dangerous!

Man, a lot of you need to remember to take your Ritalen.

 

[d4]

Nor should you! This is perhaps the most pointless thread I've seen in a long time.

Man, a lot of you need to remember to take your Ritalen.

i'm sure if you started a thread about some aspect of a game or setting that concerned or bothered you, you wouldn't take too kindly to people mocking you about that concern.

just because you think it's "pointless" doesn't mean everyone will.

 

[dwilgar]

The US is quite a different case. Firstly, it wasn't feudal, wasn't roughly medieval, had access to much better agricultural technologies (and slaves), and most importantly, had a ready consumer demand that purchased the majority of its excess production (England) as opposed to having to internally balance a supply/demand cycle. It was also a situation of expansion into a previously unclaimed and fairly uncontested land (well, relatively, of course).

And, although I'm not an American historian, I think you'll find that those numbers are (effectively) artificially low because of large territory "purchases" from other countries. Territories that could only in the fanciful dreams of colonial states be claimed as part of the actual country until a much later time. From 1790 to 1820 the sq. miles of land doubled and total population increased by 2.5 times. Land sq. miles had doubled again by 1870, but population had increased four-fold from 1820. Had there been no territory purchases, density would have rapidly increased, even though the land/population growth feed-back cycle would have been absent.

joe b.

Yep, I realize substantial differences exist between the early USA and Europe, but my the point I was more interested in was that you could have a country where the population is highly concentrated (early US with 90%+ of the population near the Atlantic Ocean), there are large tracts of "wild" lands, and hence the overall population is low. The other data point I thought was interesting was the it took the USA until 1950 to achieve a population density that is representative of what some have argued as a minimal sustainable density.

Personally, I prefer having a world that has lots of empty places - it gives me room to place adventures and interest locales. It I had a world with population densities representative of 14th century France or England, just where are the mysterious unexplored regions?

Dwilgar

 

[Vaxalon]

Let me plant my banner in the "pointless" camp.

 

[d4]

Personally, I prefer having a world that has lots of empty places - it gives me room to place adventures and interest locales. It I had a world with population densities representative of 14th century France or England, just where are the mysterious unexplored regions?

excerpt from S. John Ross' excellent "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" article.

At the medieval level of technology, a square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns) will support 180 people. This takes into account normal blights, rats, drought, and theft, all of which are common in most worlds. If magic is common, the GM may decide a square mile of land can support many more people.

that means if medieval France had a population density of 100 people per square mile, cultivated land covered 55.5% of the country, leaving 44% of the countryside wilderness. England's 45 people per square mile means that 75% of the countryside was unsettled wilderness. plenty of room for "mysterious unexplored regions" there, and still having a population density 20 times higher than Eberron's.

at Eberron's given population density, only about 1.1% of the continent should be settled, cultivated land. i've seen some maps of the Khorvaire that had national borders and cities and towns drawn on it. it surely doesn't look like 98.9% of the continent is uninhabited. and note that this is based on a support limit modeled on 14th-century agriculture. if Khorvaire's spellcasters are able to increase crop yields, then a square mile of cultivated land could support even more than 180 people.

 

[Whisper72]

Definately pointless....

All the extrapolations and real-world modelling is useless. If in the real world think-tanks with the mose brilliant ppl on the world have difficulty overseeing all the consequences of something as simple as the doubling of the oil price on the world-economic stage, let alone its further effect on consumer behavior, how the hell are we going to be able to predict in any way the real effect of magic and monsters on eberron? All claims about 'the population is base is not able to support x or y' are nothing more then smoke, pointless and baseless claims, as there are way too many variables that are too alien in eberron compared to anything we know to make such claims... With magic and different evolution / development, not to mention divine and 'alien' interventions from other planes etc, anything is possible to have developed on eberron and can be maintained using similar explanations... what if the use of magic curing diseases and more stability allowing for a better old age means less need for large families, and hence a birthrate that has been around 2.3 for the past several centuries?? Population would develop completely different!

Let's not forget those monsters. Human spread across the real world is largely an effect of humans being the unchecked top of the food chain for the last 10,000 years or so, and thus being able to push out and establish without any problem in any type of landscape having all the time in the world to adapt. In eberron, as several ppl pointed out, there are many monsters / beasts that eat humans for breakfast, thus there are large swathes of land that are uninhabited. If you take out all the land not used by 'humans' in eberron, recalculate your population densities and think again.

So... eberron could have any population density you want. Claiming that it is 'broken' is total nonsense. If it does not fit with 'your' look and feel for the campaign, this is another matter. Change it by all means to fit your needs....

 

[WizarDru]

The bigger the chunk an item takes of a person's bankroll, the less a person is apt to use it. In D&D® spells take a huge chunk of a person's bankroll.

How much would it cost for an artificer to create a magic item, such as the Stone of Sending from (iirc) Sep's Story Hour? Since that item never goes bad, if a specific house creates 1 a year for 100 years, how expensive are they to use, now? How busy were the artificers during the Last War? Does it matter, per se?

It sounds to me, so far, like the following:
a) Khorvaire doesn't follow the currently established rules for societal density on Earth, primarily looking at Feudal Europe
b) the believability of that aspect can be doubted or accepted with equal vigor
c) The specifics of population density have virtually no impact on a game in real, practical terms
d) the D&D core is about a game, not a reality simulator
e) So is Eberron
f) Some central D&D concepts lead to ridiculous situations when attempting world-building, and are best ignored (hong's chickens)
g) Some readers find this detail far more distracting/interesting than others

At the end of the day, I'm much more concerend about whether or not a setting facilitates adventures for my players and inspires me to develop stories for them to experience. My only concern for population density numbers is to determine relativity from one city or country to the next.

I'm curious...do these details ruin your potential use of the setting? I know that it irritates me when I see gross mistakes in a movie or TV show concerning my field of work, and I'm sure the same applies elsewhere...but I'm quite forgiving, depending on the context. I don't care if Spiderman 2 plays fast-and-loose with science and physics: I want to see kickin' fights and well delivered characters. The same holds true with Eberron, in it's fashion. I don't care if Sharn doesn't have the correct amount of farmlands surrounding it to support it's food requirements any more than I like to think about all the logical improbabilities of Coruscant, the city-world of Star Wars. I just want to kill monsters and take their loot.