New Realms = Old School

[Barastrondo]

Why are fantasy settings for D&D so bloody huge?

I'd guess there are two primary instincts that guide it:

1) D&D was created by Americans. It reflects a lot of frontier tropes, and exaggerates them even further.

2) If you have a bloody huge setting, it will take longer for you to get to the point that there are no more orcs to fight.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Why are fantasy settings for D&D so bloody huge?

Depends on the setting. Ansalon (from DL) is smaller than Australia, I believe, and Ravenloft's main continent is about the size of France. (The one part of the setting outside that that is really big is the Russia/Siberia analog, where vast frozen wilderness is sort of the point.)

 

[Mournblade94]

I'd guess there are two primary instincts that guide it:

1) D&D was created by Americans. It reflects a lot of frontier tropes, and exaggerates them even further.

2) If you have a bloody huge setting, it will take longer for you to get to the point that there are no more orcs to fight.

Sigh and for DMs like myself who are obsessed with INGAME timekeeping, this is often annoying with travel times.

Hell I keep track of how many minutes it takes the PC's to walk around Karvosa in Golarion. I used to make blow up maps of Waterdeep. All for futile accurate timekeeping.

 

[S'mon]

I'd guess there are two primary instincts that guide it:

1) D&D was created by Americans. It reflects a lot of frontier tropes, and exaggerates them even further.

2) If you have a bloody huge setting, it will take longer for you to get to the point that there are no more orcs to fight.

I think those are right. The FR and Greyhawk are 'big & empty' as written. The Wilderlands at standard 5 miles/hex scale feels strangely cramped though, probably because it was designed at 15 miles/hex, 9 times larger, which works much better IME.

At least pre "Points of Light", D&D had a problem IMO with these huge empty settings combined with cultures closely based on real medieval Europe. Feudalism really needs a population of at least 30 per square mile (High Medieval France was over 100/square mile); below that you need something more like the clan systems of the Highland Scots (pop ca 10 per square mile) or the early Anglo-Saxons. So eg Greyhawk's Flanaess, as described, makes no sense with the populations as listed. The easiest solution is to add a zero to the end of all the non-urban population figures.

 

[jbear]

Edit- Just read Piratecat's warning on the last page.

My comment was not on topic, but I couldn't believe the rude comment that someone left with regard to the OP map and efforts.

So I'll take my own advice and bite my tongue.


@ OP: Nice Job

 

[Hussar]

I'd guess there are two primary instincts that guide it:

1) D&D was created by Americans. It reflects a lot of frontier tropes, and exaggerates them even further.

2) If you have a bloody huge setting, it will take longer for you to get to the point that there are no more orcs to fight.

I suppose. It's just so hard to wrap my head around. When travel times between population centers becomes months, it makes trade virtually impossible. ((Yes, yes, Silk Road and all that, but, on the Silk Road, for the most part, you had population centers spaced at worst a couple of weeks apart.)) Something I've noticed with a lot of published settings is that the setting designers weren't coming at it from an economic standpoint, but, rather, going with what looks cool.

Kinda like what S'mon is saying.

Depends on the setting. Ansalon (from DL) is smaller than Australia, I believe, and Ravenloft's main continent is about the size of France. (The one part of the setting outside that that is really big is the Russia/Siberia analog, where vast frozen wilderness is sort of the point.)

Again, I suppose. Although, "smaller than Australia" is hardly small. It is a continent after all. And, while Ansalon might be that size, there are numerous other lands as well.

To me, Ravenloft got it right. A campaign setting should be about a month's travel side to side. For me anyway.

OTOH, if it's that small, you have a much more limited choice for terrain and climate.

I guess I just prefer much more focused than diverse in my settings.

Totally a personal preference there.

 

[Windjammer]

Copy-pasted from the now fully updated OP:

UPDATE, March 16 2010: All Further Info to go with the Map now available for Download as PDF

I've collected all the official information on hex entries into a PDF, which you can download here:

Hex Reference for the map above - 4E Silver Marches

Further, on another forum I showed a scan of my (handwritten!) random encounter tables I use in conjunction with the above map, namely here. I have now made a neat layout of that which should be much more legible:

Random Encounter Tables for D&D 4E.

You still need to go to this link for instructions on how these tables work. In short, they don't give you individual monsters, but worked out 'encounter groups' which the tables reference by EL and (in parenthesis) page references to the MM1 or MM2 - so "3(19)" means 'EL 3 (check page 19 in MM 1)".

Finally, if this is your first foray into hexcrawling games, then this post by Melan which originally appeared on Enworld (since preserved on Jeff Rients' blog) will help you grok them. It certainly helped me!

Happy gaming!

 

[darjr]

That is awesome, thank you.

I'm thinking about doing a hex crawl with RPGA 'My Realms' adventures utilizing your stuff. I think that I can pull it off, I think I've got players willing to try.

 

[Windjammer]

I'm thinking about doing a hex crawl with RPGA 'My Realms' adventures utilizing your stuff. I think that I can pull it off, I think I've got players willing to try.

If you do, please post your experiences!

That would shake my world beyond the level of seeing my stuff getting used by other people. See, I've been busy flaming away at how harmful the RPGA has been in influencing 4E's design for the better part of 2 years now. So if you really pull a hewcrawling game off in a LFR/MyRealms environment - any crawl, really - replete with random loot and unbalanced encounters.... then I'm going to eat my proverbial hat.

 

[darjr]

Uh oh. That sounds like a challenge.