PoL & population density

[invokethehojo]

Crandonford (Human town)
- Crandonford controls an area of land stretching one mile from its city center in all directions. This means that once you're more than a 15-minute brisk walk from the Mayor's house, you're in The Wild.
- A one-mile-radius circle gives us 3.14 square miles, or ~2010 acres. Between the town itself, the river, a rocky meadow or two, and some road, assume that only 40% of the land is farmed. 804 acres of farmland.
- Crandonford doesn't have any John Deer powered tractors, but it does have a Cleric of Chauntea. It grows 5000 lbs (~15 koku) of "food" per acre. Multiply that by 804 and you find out that Crandonford can feed 12,185 people.

But that's a max population assuming all food is consumed locally. It's probably safe to assume that half of that food or more is traded to the Dwarven mining town down-river in exchange for metal goods; and some to the elves in exchange for magicy stuff. It's still conceivable though that Crandonford will have a population of about ~5,000 souls (most of whom are probably farmers).
QUOTE]

have you thought about the size it takes for 5,000 people to live in. my small town is about that many people and we couldn't fit in 1 square mile (or even the radius you describe) without displacing all the fields that the food is grown in

Just one more reason fantasy games are made fun with a pinch of reality, but more than that ruins is

 

[Warbringer]

That means roughly a density < 10 hab/km² (or 38 habitants per square mile).

Great for a beowulf style period (600AD)

 

[salsb]

Crandonford (Human town)
- Crandonford controls an area of land stretching one mile from its city center in all directions. This means that once you're more than a 15-minute brisk walk from the Mayor's house, you're in The Wild.
- A one-mile-radius circle gives us 3.14 square miles, or ~2010 acres. Between the town itself, the river, a rocky meadow or two, and some road, assume that only 40% of the land is farmed. 804 acres of farmland.
- Crandonford doesn't have any John Deer powered tractors, but it does have a Cleric of Chauntea. It grows 5000 lbs (~15 koku) of "food" per acre. Multiply that by 804 and you find out that Crandonford can feed 12,185 people.

But that's a max population assuming all food is consumed locally. It's probably safe to assume that half of that food or more is traded to the Dwarven mining town down-river in exchange for metal goods; and some to the elves in exchange for magicy stuff. It's still conceivable though that Crandonford will have a population of about ~5,000 souls (most of whom are probably farmers).
QUOTE]

have you thought about the size it takes for 5,000 people to live in. my small town is about that many people and we couldn't fit in 1 square mile (or even the radius you describe) without displacing all the fields that the food is grown in

Just one more reason fantasy games are made fun with a pinch of reality, but more than that ruins is

Not quite. For example, ~1500, London and its suburbs had a mean population densty of ~50 people per acre, so 5000 people would take up 100 acres, which is ~5% of a one mile radius circle. If the town was even more built up, say like London's inner distincts, then it would be even less.

(BTW a publically-avaliable citation is though JSTOR would be a better place to look for medieval demographics)

 

[Andor]

There was also no real medieval cities built with white stone on the side of a mountain with multiple layers.

Do tell.

I can't remember any town built entirely on a lake, maybe there was, I dunno.

Well, here's Mont San Michel, which while not on a lake is completely surrounded by water at high tide, which severely limits the options of a besieger.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

To justify medieval, or earlier, levels of civilization, you have to assume that societies are constantly in a state of upheaval. To prevent developed societies from wiping out all the threats and essentially maklng adventurers obsolete, you have to keep those societies from becoming too developed. To me, that's where the danger of Points of Light comes in. The dangerous world is providing a counterbalance to the stabilizing influence of societies.

Make sense?

It does to me. But then, that's the way I am running my current D&D/Arcana Evolved campaign: It's sort of animistic, with the "spirits of the land" gaining power from the land they control. The "spirit of the mountain" might be able to dominate those around him, but usually once you get a ways distant from the mountain, the lesser spirits band together to oppose him. It's very rare for a "spirit" to gain enough power in this manner to become a god, and once one does, it usually has to spend a lot of its time maintaining that power. The much diminished but immortal spirits thus squashed are always looking for a toehold to get some power back.

Which means that the "spirit world" as a whole doesn't want mortals developing too far. Sure, an individual spirit wants its mortals gaining enough power to do what it wants them to do. But it doesn't want to encourage too much trade that might help the spirit down the road. Unless there is an alliance. Which might get cancelled next year. Not only does PeopleBurg distrust the neighboring ClanOfOrcs because of this influence, PeopleBurg isn't so happy with the downstream HumanVille, either. Yeah, they band together to fight temporary threats, and they trade some, but the politics and religion of, say, protecting a joint stretch of development in the middle is too much to ask. Unless a godling is being born, or trying to be born.

 

[Andor]

If you need to put a book of (somewhat editted) demon-worshipping rituals in peoples hands to generate an adventure for people to level on, you do so.

Heh that could be a great encounter. A medium sized city (say 20k people) and surrounding farms (Another 1 or 2 hundred k people) who are dominated by a demon worshipping cult that 'taxes' a few hundred people a year as sacrifices. But the demons destroy any monsters or maruders that trouble the area protected by the cultists. Do the PCs intervene? They can probably destroy the cult if they want to, but then who will protect the city and farmers? Nice moral dilema.

 

[Sonny]

I think population will be pretty sparse; most towns will have around 100 people, maybe one or two big cities (capitals et al) with over 2.000. At least, this is how I picture a PoL setting; no City of Greyhawk, no Ankh-Morpokh.

Besides, if we listen to the fluff, almost every race had once a great empire that fell apart (this has been said about Dragonborn, Tieflings, Elves, Eladrin, Humans, Giants and Dwarves, IIRC), so I expect to see more ruins than actual settlements

Considering the small backwater town featured in "A Touch of Madness" has a population of 2000 people, I think it's safe to say there will be really large cities in WOTC generated material.

Also note that 4th edition materials have repeatedly stated that there are kingdoms that do exist in PoL, they are just incredibly rare. WOTC seems to have a different idea what constitutes a PoL setting then what I see constantly written in posts around here.