PoL & population density

[helium3]

The thing I find funny is that people are complaining about how "unmedieval" the starting town is without having seen it. Many medieval cities had narrow roads, but there are many places in England, France, and Germany where you can still see parts of cities that aren't much changed from the middle ages. Carcasonne (a walled city) comes to mind, but York (also walled) is another good example. And yes, by American standards, the streets are narrow. But the main roads are not exactly cramped alleyways. They can handle cars - sometimes even two abreast.

I'm not complaining about the starting town in any way. Actually I'm not even complaining. I'm just stating that I hope the WotC generated setting material doesn't exude an air of "no one cares about anything besides having sick powers, killing monsters and getting loot, so we officially declare setting consistency unfun" and have all sorts of stuff that make my brain hurt. Most people may not care about the matter, but I'm the kind of person that does.

Not that I'm really all THAT worried about it. They'll likely do a bang-up job.

People don't generally want to get into the issues of medieval sanitation (or lack thereof). Therefore, D&D settlements tend to be less cramped, as real medieval towns would have been if they'd had to endure without technological improvements for hundreds of years. Roman towns tended to be less cramped for sanitation reasons. And of course, because the romans knew how to build sewers, they were also cleaner than medieval cities where people emptied chamber pots out of second story windows onto the street (and the people) below.

They also knew how to pour concrete!!

 

[HeinorNY]

I haven't seen the DMG yet, but I feel safe making some predictions about the starting town:

The streets are laid out like a modern American suburban development, not the 5-10 foot narrow alleys of a medieval town.
The houses are spaced apart from each other, not built next to each other like in real medieval towns.

Is this good enough?

 

[Ragnar69]

What town is that? Something of your design?

 

[Clavis]

Is this good enough?

Believe it or not, that's still not as crowded as historical towns would get. Figure the same population in about half to 1/3 of that area. Medieval urban populations density was about 30,000 per square mile. Yes, that meant people living on top of each other and essentially in each other's filth.

Just to be clear, I not singling out WOTC here. Almost all American game companies get their urban maps wrong, and TSR was no better. In fact, I believe the original map of Saltmarsh was much less realistic than the new one.

The reason I seem to be harping on medieval Europe so much is that medieval Europeans actually thought there were monsters and marauders everywhere outside the settled areas. They built accordingly.

My point is actually that the Points of Light idea is a good one, and that if WOTC looks to actual history they will find real models for what settlements look like when people feel afraid of their surroundings. My fear is that WOTC will mess up their good idea by failing to understand that history has already done the work for them!

 

[HeinorNY]

What town is that? Something of your design?

Saltmarch from DGM2.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well really, it is a simple thing to alter, just make your own cities. That is what I am going to have to do with mine, especially considering how my world's technology is alot different then classic D&D.

I am having highly urbanized, narrow streets, steel-structured apartment blocks, locomotive-overpasses and smog and steam everywhere. This here is a fairly good example of the kind of city I imagine in my game (just a tad more medieval): The City from Thief

I will have other cities however, with tall ancient towers, with numerous buildings built upon them, for protection and to show their wealth. The city though, to show it has been harrased for centuries has numerous city-walls, that have made the city crampt as it is squeezed into small spaces. But then overflows onto the walls, where new walls must then be built again.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

There are areas of civilization, with large swaths of dangerous and monster-populated regions that separate them.

However, the comment that it will not consist of warring empires who are jealously guarding their borders, is very, very inconsistent with the FR which very much fits that mold.

These two statements are not inconsistent at all.

It is entirely possible to have areas within states' borders without positive state control, but with states still contesting borders between them. Nothing prevents a state executive from coveting a rival's territory. That the Crown didn't completely control Sherwood Forest didn't prevent the English and Scottish from warring incessantly.

Heck, in Eberron, this is the case. None of the Five Nations have complete control over their territory (particularly Breland, with its vast stretch of empty), but that didn't stop them from enthusiastically beating the snot out of each other in the Last War.

Brad

 

[JohnSnow]

What town is that? Something of your design?

That's Saltmarsh, as printed in Dungeon Masters Guide II. In other words, that's one of those towns everyone's deriding that was "thrown together" by WotC. So, in other words, they don't always throw up a lot of straight, wide streets.

Believe it or not, that's still not as crowded as historical towns would get. Figure the same population in about half to 1/3 of that area. Medieval urban populations density was about 30,000 per square mile. Yes, that meant people living on top of each other and essentially in each other's filth.

I don't know about that. The city of London had a population during Roman times of 45,000 people. In the middle ages, it reached a peak of only 18,000. That's inside the WALLED part of the city which is about 1 square mile in size.

By contrast, if you square off that map of Saltmarsh, it's about 3500 feet (.66 miles) by 2000 feet (.38 miles). Multiplying, that comes to 1/4 of a square mile. And, approximating, roughly 1/3 of that square is either water or undeveloped area outside the city walls. Which means that the land area of Saltmarsh is roughly 1/6 of a square mile.

We're told the population is nearly 4,000 people (3,850 to be exact). That's roughly 1/5 that of medieval London's 18,000. So, 1/5 of the population in 1/6 of the space sounds like it's MORE crowded than medieval London. Or, to compare to your numbers, that's a population density of 23,000 per square mile.

That's less crowded than London at its height in Roman Britain, but the Romans had better sewage and sanitation, meaning that they could handle more densely populated cities. It's less crowded than some medieval cities obviously, but not by much. And for a town of less than 4,000 it's pretty tightly packed.

Based on all of that, I'd say that Saltmarsh, as presented in DMG2, is pretty consistent with medieval towns.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Is this good enough?

It's darn sure good enough for me.

 

[Clavis]

The city of London had a population during Roman times of 45,000 people. In the middle ages, it reached a peak of only 18,000. That's inside the WALLED part of the city which is about 1 square mile in size.

You're right. The 18,000 figure is for the 1100's though. By the 1300s London was crammed with 100,000 people, although it was spilling outside the walls. That kind of crowding is partly what made the Plague so bad when it hit.

The other thing is, historically over-crowded cities are (IMHO) more consistent aesthetically with the implied dark fantasy of a POL setting. I personally prefer to have the "safe" areas be just as nasty as the "dangerous" ones, just in different ways. I think it creates more adventuring opportunities.