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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 6322192" data-attributes="member: 92305">I don't know why I've never thought of this before.  Probably because I haven't created landscape in a populated and tame area for a game in a long, long time.Background:  How I came upon the quandary--I am creating a map for my upcoming Conan game.  I'm setting the game in Argos, which is an old Hyborian kingdom.  It's been settled land for thousands of years, ruled over by different peoples, all the way back to the time of the Acheronians (who were overrun by the Bori barbarians, who eventually evolved into the Argosseans, the people who inhabit the land today).  The point here being:  this is not the frontier.  This is land has long been settled, and, in fact, the interior of Argos is generally considered very peaceful, free of bandits and most monsters.But, this is a fantasy game (well, sword & sorcery, to be more precise), and adventure can be had anywhere during the Hyborian Age.  My last campaign centered on the true frontier of the known world, in Cimmeria, and it was primarily a wilderness setting.  This time, I wanted to go the opposite direction where I had a mix of races (the cosmopolitan nature of the Argossean port cities) and big cities to explore as well as the wilderness.  Plus, there aren't a lot of ruins in Cimmeria, and in for this campaign, Argos is littered with ruins from the various peoples who have conquered the land dating back to the time of the Acheronians.  That means, unlike my previous campaign, I'll be able to add dungeons to explore.So, I've set game (will start the game), in the border region of Argos near the border with Shem.  In my game, the region is a bit more lawless than the true interior of the kingdom.  This is what passes for the "frontier" in Argos, although it is, in no way, as savage as Cimmeria was/is.Here's my quandary:Part of designing a campaign is setting up places to put the PCs in jeopardy.  Part of creating jeopardy is isolating the PCs, cutting off any support, so that they have to rely upon themselves.  Well, a town of villagers can be quite a resource for PCs, depending on what it is that has them in jeopardy.  The villages typically aren't isolated places.  They have alliances and are maybe protected by the local lordling.  At the least, the village is a safe place to sleep and resupply--maybe even gather NPC help.Ever seen a map of a fantasy world where the villages and towns were very close together?  Typically, no.  It's usually a trek to the next town.Quandary:  But, in reality, especially in antiquity and medieval times, towns and villages were usually spaced very close together.  You typically can't go 10 miles without hitting some small village.  This lattice network of villages and towns provides a support network for populated areas.Have you ever thought about that?  Unless there is some terrain feature to prevent it (even then, in real life, villages will pop up in the damnest places, on the sides of mountains, in the center of swamps, etc), populated areas usually have a town or village every 10 miles or so from each other.  And, if I follow that pattern for my roleplaying game, "help" is never going to be that far away.</blockquote>

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