medieval town/city generation

[Bluenose]

At the "sub-village" level, you have to remember that they don't exist in isolation; each of the tiny communities is within a day's walk or less from a larger community. So the only things it needs are things that it can't wait 4-12 hours for...

A lot less than a day's walk, in any area suitable for agriculture. You can only plough fields that are within the radius at which your animals can be taken/brought back within an hour or so, since you want to have enough time to get some work done and the animals require rest and time to eat (which oxen won't do in the dark). At the same time, no one wants good agricultural land to be wasted, so the fields that are just a bit too far away for you to plough are likely ploughed by the neighbouring village/hamlet/thorp. In England and France, you're looking at roughly a mile between villages. Market towns are further apart, 10-20 miles. That's where you go to sell/buy things that aren't available in the village, and which the last pedlar didn't bring through.

Edit: This is in areas of arable farming. Other areas the density is noticeably lower.

 

[Gilladian]

Yeah, I was referring to/thinking of market towns, not how close to each neighboring hamlet...

Also, isolated farms/manors only occur in relatively safe regions. In less safe areas, people banded together and lived in group structures, like the ring-wall villages (in Russia?) where winter storms and wolves were major issues.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

I did a little work on this based on an old Enworld thread. If interested, PM me and I can give it to you.

 

[Gilladian]

Thanks Gilladian and Mark CMG, that's helpful.

Mark, does "Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" have some tables or text on population distribution by settlement size?

I'm not Mark, but...

Appendix 1: Demographics (of MMS:WE) breaks down communities by size, number of residents, how to generate NPC and PC class numbers, etc...

There's LOTS of discussion of how manors, villages, cities work, who lives in them, who rules them, determining their income, etc... right down to how many bushels of what grain per acre.

Whenever I feel that I'm losing the "mundane medieval" feel of my campaign, I go back to it and recement the details in my brain.