Population density in your setting?

[jgbrowning]

Well, you got to take into account how wars and plagues and such affected medieval European society. There's also infant mortality and life expectancy. A fantasy setting may not have all the same problems. If you've got a hundred years or so of peace in your setting, you're going to have a higher population. The last time Europe had a hundred years of relative peace was during the Roman Empire. So right there is a major difference. Then diseases, infant mortality, life expectancy, etc. affect the population differently in a setting with clerics that have access to healing magic.

Like I've said before, D&D isn't really medieval, no matter how many medieval trapping we stick on it, so I don't bother with trying to make it realistically medieval.

My general argument is that fantasy worlds based around the common D&D theme would be likely to have slightly higher than medieval populations due to the beneficial effects of magic. I however, do think that the standard D&D tropes are just some fantasy bits layered over a pseudo-medieval environment. By pseudo-medieval I mean as more commonly conceived by people (through literature and movies mostly) as to opposed to a historian's understanding of the period. But that's fine with me, the point is to have fun playing the game and making up new things, not worrying to much about anything historical.

Yeah, if you're going to compare population densities for cities, don't use modern American cities for comparison. They won't work, because we're spread out. Compare it to figures for cities out in the developing world. For example, one of my players thought the map I had for the home base city in my campaign was a little small. I gave the city and area according to guidelines in the World Builder's Guidebook. Anyway, I calculated the approximate population density of the city and compared it to densities of cities in the developing world, where there are more people packed into a smaller area. The numbers were somewhat close, so I figured it was realistic enough for me.

What I did was compare populations estimations of ancient/medieval cities (to avoid the issue of the effects of industrialization which even impacts the 3rd world) with physical size as understood by historians. It's not perfect, but it's close enough for me at least. And I don't think I could have been more accurate without really researching at a high level.

I found this really cool site: http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/default.htm that gives some amazing maps. I particularly like the ones showing 3rd world cities. I like looking at one say, Agra (Taj Mahal) and comparing it to an american city like Boulder. It's easy to see how much space is given up to just the auto in roads and parking from the air and then you think about how many people effectively have space in two areas (work and home) when compared to the more historical trend of working where you live. And the pictures are damn pretty too...

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

One consideration for population is that commoners may not be paying the same costs for magical services as adventurers. Adventurers tend to be far wealthier than most commoners and often are passing through different communities. They may be charged higher prices for services and end up subsidizing services for others, much like business class passengers on airplanes help defer the costs of other types of passengers.

To this end, different price scales may exist. The cost of a cure minor wounds or a cure disease may be priced according to a peasant's income, not a set gold piece amount that an adventurer would pay. So, the cost of a chicken might cover a minor healing spell. Or a local farmer or craftsman may volunteer some service to a local temple.

In some cases, clergy may be interested in casting spells that benefit the community and not charge at all or charge at a reduced cost. Plant growth spells might be cast regularly at a reduced rate. The impact of a different fee structure is two-fold. It gives the local populace some incentive to support their local spell casters, especially clergy. Thus the peasants in a country have a reason to support their local temple -- both are looking after each other's mutual interests. It also tends to promote social stability, as there are less deaths from injury and disease while crops are more stable. Considering the relative rarity of some spell casters, very powerful spells such as raise dead and resurrection may be outside the means of most people who are neither nobles, adventurers, or wealthy merchants.

Yeah, I think there would definitly be at least a two tiered system. Before the modern concept of listing a price for an item and that's it, bargaining was the expect method of commercial discourse. I actually like bargaining more because it's fun and you get to interact with someone. One of the reason I like India. But anyway, I think the local community would do what local communities have always done: fight, bicker, laugh, love, and in the end, try and take care of one another.

Another consideration is how many deaths are caused by monsters. Not all monsters will necessary want to kill an entire village. Some may enslave villagers to work as farmers or herdsmen. (The Spartans had the helots serving as farmers.) Others may wish to trade or offer services to a community. (A gold dragon, unlike his red dragon counterpart, may set up a few trade deals with a few communities. With polymorph abilities, some dragons may even be able to pose as merchants buying crops and herd animals for market. )

What are your thoughts on my ideas?

I find the monster one the harder to deal with because it's very dependent upon locality and game setting and as such doesn't really lend itself very well to general rules. How does one take into acount monster/human conflict when thinking about population? I like to fudge it so that in a world of some very powerful creatures (like dragons) the benefits of one kinda outweigh the negatives of another on the grand scale, while at the local scale the effects are dramatic. It's not terribly elegant, and I've been trying to figure out other ways of dealing with monster/ecology/population issues, but as of yet i haven't found anything that's tremendously satisfying.

joe b.

 

[William Ronald]

jg browning poste:
Yeah, I think there would definitly be at least a two tiered system. Before the modern concept of listing a price for an item and that's it, bargaining was the expect method of commercial discourse. I actually like bargaining more because it's fun and you get to interact with someone. One of the reason I like India. But anyway, I think the local community would do what local communities have always done: fight, bicker, laugh, love, and in the end, try and take care of one another.

I still see bartering done in a few places here in the U.S. As I recall, the al-Qadim setting had haggling as a skill. So, does this mean that we are likely to see A Magical Society: India or a similarly named book? (I am reading A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture currently. I am finding it very useful -- and a lot more amusing than I thought.)

jb browning posted:
I find the monster one the harder to deal with because it's very dependent upon locality and game setting and as such doesn't really lend itself very well to general rules. How does one take into acount monster/human conflict when thinking about population? I like to fudge it so that in a world of some very powerful creatures (like dragons) the benefits of one kinda outweigh the negatives of another on the grand scale, while at the local scale the effects are dramatic. It's not terribly elegant, and I've been trying to figure out other ways of dealing with monster/ecology/population issues, but as of yet i haven't found anything that's tremendously satisfying.

This sort of problem may be difficult, or even impossible to solve in a quntifiable manner. We really have nothing to compare this sort of situation to, except to say that predators usually are outnumbered by prey. Part of the problem is that some "monsters" are actually intelligent beings with magical powers while others are somewhat like wild animals. It is a difficult problem, and it might be easier to leave it to good DM judgement than numbers. (Perhaps a key thing to remember is that most creatures have to eat something, and that intelligent creatures will find different, innovative ways to use their environment.)

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

This sort of problem may be difficult, or even impossible to solve in a quntifiable manner. We really have nothing to compare this sort of situation to, except to say that predators usually are outnumbered by prey.

Well, we have a few examples, like man eating tigers - the worst are said to have killed over 400 people (like the Champawat man-eater). Otherwise, most humanoid monsters just take the place of bad people - really, there's not much difference between a rampaging horde of hobgoblins, and a rampaging horde of humans. Men have always been man's greatest predator, and I suspect that will remain the same in a fantasy world. In most cases, many more will die from war and disease than from dragons and other beasts - although it occurs to me that it might be a cool setting to have a world where the civilized races are just barely holding on versus the aberrations and monstrosities...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Death by monsters would be a constant to me, population would adjust but You also have the impact of gods, while this will vary from campaign to campaign the force they present may be compared to that of superpowers. The result of a god coming into power could plus or minus population.

 

[Will]

re: Spell costs. This hit me when I was considering 'sea clerics' casting various spells on a ship.

If someone could guarantee using even a fraction of their spells, daily, for listed prices... it'd beat the hell out of adventuring! They'd make more than ANYONE at their level.

I decided that spell prices are listed for quick 'shopping' type stuff. That mage makes a month's wages out of the rare guy coming in for Identify.

I suspect that clerics or others working in a total service capacity should more accurately be 'priced' as 'talented craftsman' wages. The numbers of clerics available, at least according to DMG, supports the idea of a ubiquity of basic healing magics.


On to the main topic...

I think one issue lurking behind this isn't about the figures, it's about the model. A lot of games say 'medieval europe' and then portray this barely-inhabited wasteland dotted with small isolated communities. Which is almost nothing like anywhere in medieval europe, mainly because they're emulating Tolkein, who wasn't doing medieval europe, neither.

 

[Abraxas]

Away from my computer for a while and a bunch of nifty stuff gets said, and now I'm late for the ball.

posted by jgbrowning
The issue eventually becomes one of "what is cheaper" as well as "what is socially accepted." Magic would only replace reality were it cheaper and socially accepted to do so.

Well the cost of most spells is really only time. As others have said - in a world with magic and people capable of casting spells - the price for the poor could easily be lower than "book" price. Spells cast for the poor could be subsidized by the price charged to the wealthy and adventuring types. Also in a society where there are casters it seems to me casting spells would be socially acceptable.

posted by jgbrowning
I'm finding it harder to accept that all of the potential benefits of magic leads to a lower than expected population level (given general tech level) as opposed to leading to a greater than expected population level.

If you slap magic on a real world culture, I would agree with you - however, in a world where magic always existed the cultural drive to increase the population may not be as great. The average man/woman may not feel the need to have as many descendants as possible in order to assure that
1) their line lives on
2) they have sufficient labor to survive
3) they have sufficient replacements when children die
4) they have a means to be taken care of in their old age

I can easily envision a much reduced rate of reproduction because the same things that regularly killed off the general populace in the real world would rarely kill somone in a world with access to spells that heal/cure disease/increase food production and generally increase the standard of living

posted by jgbrowning
I don't think changing the population levels would necessarily mess the "unexplored reaches" theme. I think it could easily be addressed by a map that only encircles areas that have enough population close enough to each other to be considered settled. I suppose, sort of like the maps showing the early states societies. There were people outside the state areas (and between rival state areas), but they weren't part of the group encircled. To me, if there's really 100 miles of nothing between two population centers, I find it hard to understand why they would be considered as a singular unit, rather than as many realtively unorganized groups.

I agree any DM could easily make such an adjustment for their campaign - but there is no reason for WoTC to change it, it would just bug a different group of people around here

As for losing the unexplored reaches theme - I'm a big fan of the Birthright setting, but the biggest peeve I had with the setting was it was too small - not enough room - so I doubled (or tripled, its been a while) the scale of the maps. But i didn't ask TSR to publish errata to increase the scale of the maps

I can think of a few reasons that such widely separated groups would think of themselves as a singular unit
1) You would need a heck of a lot more maps in the CS if they didn't
2) Aren't there maps of the early US that show territories that were considered part of the US but had almost no US citizen population in them? Couldn't the Eberronese feel the same way?
3) As another poster noted - perhaps at one time in the setting (about 100 years ago) there was a much greater population that more or less connected the current population centers across these now empty zones. The inhabitants still feel as if they belong to the singular unit and have broken down into truly separate entities as of yet.
4) Or its simply a cultural anomaly of the inhabitants of Eberron who don't have the same cultural background of the real world.

A link to the mythusmage post is here

There are what, about 8 of us still discussing this - I think both groups are really an insignificant portion of the setting's consumers and ultimately, it isn't that satisfying the simulationists isn't a valid idea, its just not a neccesary one (just like making Birthright fit my preference wasn't necessary - although it should be, I am ruler of a couple of planes in the Abyss - I'm plotting my revenge as we speak). The designers just have to get the feel they are looking for - and I think they've done that. I'm actually switching my last Birthright campaign to Eberron (so take that all those that wouldn't rescale the map )

Its been nice talking to ya all. Now I have to go correct a post in another thread and say something to Diaglo.

Well this has been a fun discussion, but I think I've said all I rewally need to, plus everytime PC is in here making us play nice its time away from him posting an update to his storyhour

 

[nopantsyet]

In the wilderness, there are places with zero people per square mile. Try and wrap your mind around that. I know it doesn't fit many people's idea of what a realistic fantasy setting should be, but that's how it is.

In fact, most of the land is unpopulated. I go by the thinking that most people don't have magical resources so population growth is relatively constant around zero. A lot of people seem to ignore population distribution, instead relying on average density. If you eliminate population centers > ten thousand, I imagine you will find extremely low average population density at any time in history.

Cities are another story altogether. Cities have a greater ability to aggregate resources, allowing them to support greater numbers of people while simultaneously allowing for greater specialization. Result = higher level of technological and social sophistication = higher population growth and increasing population density, often to extremes. Take a look at a map of Venice in the 14th century. A quarter of a million people lived there. But outside the cities, the Italy of that era was mostly empty according to what I have read.

 

[Kichwas]

Depends on where you go in Fahla.

Probably as much as 120 or more per square mile in the Lomryian empire - a figure which considers that much of the homeland is still swampland held by feral fey and the great cities on the coast like Coinic can hold a million or more. But it can drop to the low forties in Kleishdun - especially where the kingdoms have shattered and so many of the former armies now sell their swords to imperials looking to 'adventure' the rest of the world...

Then you have places like the great desert where it comes in miles per person, because all you've got is hardy nomads and serpent men fleeing enslavement in the empire.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Great post-JGB.

We know how many people are required to run a roughly european feudal/medievalesque society. We know what densities were common, and how those densities support the necessary division of labor that is required to support the continuation of the medievalesque society. I think they're good starting points when discussing how magic could change things.

joe b.

See now, I totally agree with your motives here, and I think they're fun to hash around, but I got some questions.

One thing I could not determine from the Khorvaire thread, is how we know how many people are needed to support a medieval society? Or at least how we know that in terms of an indiscriminate calculation of population density.

I mean running down a straight density calculation for the whole of Khorvaire makes about as much sense as running down that calculation for pre-Columbian North America and pronouncing that the Meso-American civilizations couldn't have existed, like the poor bumblebee who cannot fly, because the density was too low

This isn't even a question I have in terms of records or methods of counting. This is a question I have with regard to a period that saw a tremendous population increase over the course of its history and yet maintained fairly similar societies throughout.

Now, I'm not trying to be too much of a cultural relativist here, but I would say that a fair amount of that is inherent in gaming, simulationism, and many forms of societal analysis.

But even if you got down which population figure from which year you wanted to base your society on, I gotta ask how you can know that the figure from that year is necessary for that society.

I mean, in the Khorvaire thread, people were often using pre-plague 14th century Europe as the standard, but I know a lot of people who would argue , both well and with authority, that society had far too many people and that things perked up when the density went down.

And that sort of thing makes me question the whole issue.

But, onto tangents,

Agree. However, i think magic tends to increase population as opposed to decreasing it. Know what I mean? Magic is an additive bonus to population through things such as plant growth, communication, and potential labor power. Magic doesn't reduce population except when used as most D&D magic is used: in combat (with a few exceptions of course like disease and plant reduction type spells).

joe b.

Here I have to disagree simply because I disagree with your core assumptions rather than your analysis. I mean the fantasy helps or hurts argument is a whole other thing. But...

Much of the population analysis I've looked at recently, and granted it's a heady, strange, and divisive topic, seems to see these as supplements or accidents to the primary cause of population growth, value.

I mean look at Malthus, classic, but the underlying solution he sees to inhibiting population growth is to cause people to marry later. And the way you do that is to make having kids and getting married a poorer idea for how to live your life or far too expensive for young people to do.

And I just don't see magic as something that really puts that much value into population expansion. In fact, I would argue that magic, like sufficiently advanced technology ( ) retards population growth, and may even stabilize or decline it.

I mean, magic increases individual productivity, yes? So plant growth makes it easier for one farmer to produce more food with less labor, yes? And should give him a pretty impressive competitive edge over his neighbor, we assume.

Now, why would said farmer need to have kids? Traditionally kids are a very effecient way to increase the productivity of individual farms. With magic coming along, they aren't such a clear advantage. In fact they force the farmer to work harder to afford the magic to raise the kids as well as to farm, and they may also add in nasty education expenses if they kids want to compete in the magic market directly. Something the farmer won't see much benefit from given the course of intellectual capital dependent societies.

And they are a clear disadvantage in the other aspect of child raising, and that is that population growth grants you the benefits of culture growth.

But your culture is dependent on magic more than it is on amount of land cultivated or population. And while that magic does require land and children it also requires an amazing investment of further arcane capital to get that land and those children into a position where they can actively support the magical infrastructure that the culture depends on.

And then if you do manage to get a kid who is a priest who can support another few dozen kids who are farmers. You, as a farmer, have just created a tremendous competition pressure from other farmers who can suddenly produce a heck of a lot more than they need.

So, in the long run, magic, once it becomes an infrastructure cost, discourages population growth. Simply by the effect that it allows for denser urban populations it discourages it.

Not to mention, most fantasy societies have reliable contraceptives, strong rights, and strong economic incentives for non-household labor for women.

And I'm fairly certain that magic encourages that too.

On another point:

No culture that is aware of the next culture over ever leaves uncontrolled land between them unless it is a case of mutual consent.

Look at the European Colonial empires. Or the treaty between Spain and Portugal. If you know you can get to the next guy over you establish a border between you both. Unless you think you can get away with ignoring the next culture over, and then you establish a boundary with the next culture over from that.

Look at India and Pakistan fighting over a glacier. If there was anywhere you shouldn't need a boundary because there's no reason any population would be concerned with it. It's that, yet people do live there precisely because the two nations need an arbitrary boundary to be determined.


Now my world:

I have no idea what the population density is. And neither does anyone else.

The world is largely unexplored by everyone and that's they way I intends to keeps it for everyone.

There is lots of empty space and there are lots of different lifestyles for people to choose from. Plus gods, spirits, ghosts, people, elementals, and Fae tend to screw things up. Different places different densities.