(OT) City Building

[redwing]

Im in the process of creating a campaign world. Im following the World Builder's Guide put out by WotC (2nd edition). Im down to doing kingodoms and stuff like that. But how many do i put in? Im not a geography whiz but how large is a normal city (miles) or a large city. How many miles are between cities? How many cities are in a kingdom? how many kingdoms are in a country (how do you figure it out depending on size, culture, government, etc.)

 

[Altalazar]

There is a web page that has exactly that information on it - some guy researched it for an article for Dragon magazine (he was an expert on it I think) but it never got published.

I printed it out somewhere, but it isn't at hand - does anyone else know what I mean? Anyone got the URL? I will look for it later and if I find it, I'll post it here.

 

[Cyragnome]

Hmm...this might help out. I think it's what Alta may have been thinking of. Just going through the same process, myself. This does look pretty interesting...

FWIW

Medieval Demographics made Easy

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Here's a really good link with info on this subject:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

This will help you build your kingdoms with feasible numbers of towns, villages, and cities.

As for size of cities, keep in mind that they tend to be MUCH smaller than modern american cities. Even large cities are pretty small by modern standards. A couple of miles across for a big one, perhaps.

If you're looking for a great example of a walled medieval town, do a search for Carcassonne, France. Its a fully restored medieval town. It's spectacular.

 

[redwing]

Thank you very much. Those helped me SOOOOOO much. One thing though. How do you figure how much arable land (and therefore number of kingdoms) there is based on culture. (Arabian-esque would have very little land...meaning very little population? Same with Egypt but they were one of the greatest civilizations on the world.

 

[Carnifex]

Egypt actually had a great deal of highly fertile arable land since the Nile flooded each year over a large area, bringing enriching nutrients to the soil - thus its grain harvests were a highly important source of food for the aegean and mediterranean area.