D&D 5E Questions about population density and map size. (new DM)

[doctorbadwolf]

As far as population growth, remember that comfortable, healthy populations with plenty of free time and little disease decrease growth. There is no reason to think a DnD culture would do different. Expect single child households, large sections of the population never having kids at all, etc. especially if needing to have 14 babies in order to keep the family going has never been part of the world. that is a huge difference.

As for cultural and tech advancement, humans spend a couple hundred thousand years as hunter gatherers before inventing much of anything beyond axes and fire starting sticks. And had longer lifespans that during

But more importantly, development isn't necessarily linear. A different world will not have the same developments in the same order as us.

OP: history is weird, and mostly defined by trade and disease, and to a much lesser extent, war. If you decide that clerics with cure disease are common (they don't have to be) and Druids are down to help people farm, etc, look into the history of trade for clues as how to find familiarity hooks for building the world.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, remember that all the important empires built, maintained and patrolled roads. From the First Persian Empire to the British Empire, empires rise on the power of travel and trade. Even conquerer empires, like the Mongols.

 

[Ancalagon]

On corn vs rice vs wheat: Oh corn has lots of calories, but wheat is a superior source of proteins. Protein/acre is just as important as calories/acre.

On magic and society advancement. I sometimes wonder if magic might not hold back the technological advancement of a society, as it would attract the brightest minds who would then spend their lives inventing a better magic missile spell instead of, oh I don't know, irrigation systems. Also the answer to "how does this work" might be "it's magic! lol! and discourage inquiry.

On the size of the country/kingdom: remember that travel times are far slower, which makes the world "bigger". When I grew up there was a small town nearby. It was but a short drive away so it was close... but it would take 2 hours to walk there. If walking had been the only option, I wouldn't have considered it "nearby", and I would have gone there a few times a year at most, vs every day since that's where the school was... In other words, it there really a need for a country the size of the USA?

 

[jasper]

A hole Lot of Science and his Tory is going on in this thread. I like the map posted. Do not change it. You have a good base for various adventures and unexplored areas where you can mostly go wild. Come up with some general facts about the big locations and don't worry about the small stuff.
You got go about your world in a couple ways. Magic = Tech in some cities. Low magic villages due to religion, law, null magic zone. You can take the facts posted above and run with them. Just try to make each of your posted locations unique. Ex. Village 1 only allow mayor to wear black etc.

 

[robus]

The icon placement is not the exact location of everything. As in, if you see the village symbol, that represents around 10 villages in the general area. One city is one city, and the kingdom is pretty much a castle, keep, living areas and so on.

That symbol seems like a "Market Town" then - which is fed by the surrounding villages?

Also check out this book (if you haven't already...):

How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps: Step by Step Cartography for Gamers and Fans
by Jared Blando
Link: http://a.co/88HDhA3

 

[KahlessNestor]

Environment and weather patterns influence harvest. Things like a bad season or blight wipes out a corn harvest, but wheat can be stored for years, and is less suceptable to blight.

The argument isnt that the staple of a culture is the sole determinant of that culture. Something as simple as geographical isolation is a massive factor as well. European cultures and civilzilisations were heavily influenced by Roman (and Greek and Persian) philosophy and culture and even central and far eastern Asian clultures as well. The civilisations in the Americas were more isolated from the rest of the world.

I remember just finding it fascinating that the main driver of a civilisation was its staple. In Europe during the feudal ages and dark ages, the majority of people (serfs etc) were at least indirectly involved in the production of food, and this served as a bottleneck not only to population growth, but also to technological advancement and cultural norms.

If wheat provided more kj per hectare, population would have boomed much quicker, and more people would have been free from food production to engage in other activity (mercantile, philisophical, economic, scientific etc).

It wasnt until the invention of the horse drawn plough and other inventions that sped up the production of wheat (and trade routes were opened bringing other staples like corn and so forth into the old world) that European society was left with a surplus of people who were not directly involved in food production. Population boomed with stable exesses of food, a mercantile class (and tradesmen and proeffesionals) emerged, this led to scientific advances in medicine and more complex economic systems and the growth (in both population and scientific advancement) rapidly became exponential.

Today, few people are farmers and people work in millions of different professions and trades. In the dark and feudal ages, pretty much everyone was involved in the production of food in one way or another.

Something as simple as a druid increasing the nutritional value of a harvest, reducing the man hours needed to bring in the harvest (or speeding up the time taken to bring grain to market), while protecting the harvest from blight and environmental effects frees up a lot of spare man hours and creates a population boom (and a lot of people with free time on their hands to create advanced economic, mercantile, scientific and other professions and endeavors). With PHB clerics able to cure disease on a level that is beyond modern medicine being in any way commonplace, you would expect a rapid and exponential growth in population, technology, and cultural complexity akin to the latter part of last millenium.

Yeah...no self-respecting student of history should ever let the term"Dark Ages" pass his lips...

Not saying there isn't some merit in the staple idea, just that it's way too simplistic. Rome had plenty of wheat...until it lost Egypt to the Arabs. And even before then, its significance had waned more on political factors (imperial capital moving to Constantinople and Ravenna) than to any agricultural hardship.

More important to Europe's rise was the end of the Little Ice Age at the beginning of the period, but also religious motivations. For example, Benedictine monasteries, in an effort to detach more from society, moved out onto further marginal lands. Their industry created not only the textile manufacturing (because sheep were what thrived in those marginal lands), but also eventually brought thise lands under better cultivation. And Islamic medieval advances were done mostly on the backs of the previous Christian inhabitants. The Arabs didn't have a structure to rule a vast empire, so they planted themselves atop the existing imperial Chrtian beauracracy, which is also what gave them access to Plato and Aristotle. And it was a change in Islamic theology that brought an end to it. They didn't lack surplus population, but strangled the very shoulders they stood upon.

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[Ovinomancer]

Environment and weather patterns influence harvest. Things like a bad season or blight wipes out a corn harvest, but wheat can be stored for years, and is less suceptable to blight.

The argument isnt that the staple of a culture is the sole determinant of that culture. Something as simple as geographical isolation is a massive factor as well. European cultures and civilzilisations were heavily influenced by Roman (and Greek and Persian) philosophy and culture and even central and far eastern Asian clultures as well. The civilisations in the Americas were more isolated from the rest of the world.

I remember just finding it fascinating that the main driver of a civilisation was its staple. In Europe during the feudal ages and dark ages, the majority of people (serfs etc) were at least indirectly involved in the production of food, and this served as a bottleneck not only to population growth, but also to technological advancement and cultural norms.

If wheat provided more kj per hectare, population would have boomed much quicker, and more people would have been free from food production to engage in other activity (mercantile, philisophical, economic, scientific etc).

It wasnt until the invention of the horse drawn plough and other inventions that sped up the production of wheat (and trade routes were opened bringing other staples like corn and so forth into the old world) that European society was left with a surplus of people who were not directly involved in food production. Population boomed with stable exesses of food, a mercantile class (and tradesmen and proeffesionals) emerged, this led to scientific advances in medicine and more complex economic systems and the growth (in both population and scientific advancement) rapidly became exponential.

Today, few people are farmers and people work in millions of different professions and trades. In the dark and feudal ages, pretty much everyone was involved in the production of food in one way or another.

Something as simple as a druid increasing the nutritional value of a harvest, reducing the man hours needed to bring in the harvest (or speeding up the time taken to bring grain to market), while protecting the harvest from blight and environmental effects frees up a lot of spare man hours and creates a population boom (and a lot of people with free time on their hands to create advanced economic, mercantile, scientific and other professions and endeavors). With PHB clerics able to cure disease on a level that is beyond modern medicine being in any way commonplace, you would expect a rapid and exponential growth in population, technology, and cultural complexity akin to the latter part of last millenium.

Invention of the horse drawn plough... in 6000BC Mesopotamia? Or the Han dynasty fir the first fully cast iron plough? Or maybe you meant the heavy wheeled plow used by the Romans in the first few centuries AD?

Gah. Hard to take this seriously when it's so full of holes -- like the very existence of Ancient Greece, Egypt, and the entirety of the Roman Empire.

 

[Jester David]

So I am making my own adventure and right now I am having a bit of an issue. I am not sure exactly how many kingdoms, cities, villages, etc to put on a map that is about the size of the USA.

The continental United States is pretty huge. It's comparable to Europe, and should have a similar number of nations/cultures.
Look at medieval Europe and all the various kingdoms and empires. Here's one from 1092.

Prior to the invention of trains, long distance travel was hard. A hundred miles would be a long journey of multiple days.
Medieval empires are very different than modern nations. Empires are really unions of smaller kingdoms that owe fealty to a central authority. (The USA is basically an empire of 50 small states.) Anything more than a couple days travel (60 miles, give or take) needs it's own government or local ruler. They had to be able to stand on their own against invaders or problems, because help was days or weeks away. And the areas around the borders of empires tend to be very loose, with ownership in dispute. Lines of maps were much more fluid.

The world I am creating is very young. Only about 12 million years old. Humanoids have been around about 89,000 years. Large cities and empires started about 4,000 years ago. The setting is traditional medieval-ish D&D.

Keep in mind that all of written human history covers 7000 years. The oldest civilizations were in Ancient Mesopotamia in 5000 BCE. Even then, cities and empires were small.
4000 years isn't that "young". That period would cover all of modern history and back to 2000 BCE, which was still the Bronze Age in certain regions. (As a point of reference, the Great Sphinx of Giza was built around 2500 BCE.)

Currently I have 6 kingdoms, 12 cities, and 10 villages (Which I know is way too few villages.). I am just not sure how many kingdoms I should have, how many cities and or villages per kingdom and about how much area one should take up.
Don't worry about small villages. They should be everywhere and most are just dots on a map. Generic.


A civilized and peaceful kingdom will likely have some sort of village or settlement every 20 or 30 miles. Farmers and traders aren't going to travel for more than a day to sell their wares. They're not going to stop and sleep out in the open. If villages are more than a day apart, some smart fellow will open an inn halfway between them. Settlements might be more spread out in wilder regions, but farmers and ranchers are even less likely to live more than a couple hours from the safety of a village: people are just less likely to travel between settlements.


There's no hard rule for the number of kingdoms you need. Obviously you can fit 48 "kingdoms" into the space you're thinking about. Or a good 35-40 medium-sized ones at least. It'd be easy to have 20 kingdoms of varying sizes and some negative space that is unaligned or unclaimed. Barbarian hordes and such.
I'd focus on filling one half section of the map (say, the northwest or southeast) and leaving the rest vague until you have ideas. Brainstorm and consider other races, monstrous races, fallen empires, etc.

Would looking at maps of medieval Europe give me a good base as to how populated it would be?

I always recommend looking at maps.


Check out Google Maps for the real world (both satellite and non-satellite, turning on terrain for the latter) to get an idea for scale of rivers, mountains, and the like. Modern maps of medieval Europe are also a good idea. Get a feel for size. There are a lot of kingdoms the size of Switzerland or England (or Alabama or Ohio). Compare a few different years and see how the shift over the years. Borders can change dramatically over time.
Not that the common folk really notice a difference.


The most stable borders tend to be based on terrain: mountains and rivers and such. It's easier to say "my land is on this side of the river, your land is on the other."

 

[Zethnos]

Thank you so much everyone for helping me out on this. It really means a lot to me! So far everything is going quite well

 

[aco175]

If you are looking at something as large as the US you would be good to have several empires/kingdoms. You can find several ideas on various types based on historical earth and fantasy races. Plan several areas of the land with good resources and a few with poor resources. These can be growing land, grazing land, minerals, lumber, etc... Kingdoms want to control these areas and wars are fought along these lines. You can have a large empire in decline where several smaller kingdoms broke off, but still share the culture like gods, language, and coinage.

You can have an evil empire like Mordor where lots of problems come out of. A few isolated kingdoms like an elven retreat or a mountain home of dwarves. An off-coast collection of pirates or barbarians can cause problems. Leave large areas of empty lands where the large kingdom abandoned years ago when a big plague or monster uprising caused the decline of the empire leaving lots of tombs and abandoned keeps to explore.

Have fun with it and give each area its own flavor so players will remember them. Also, do not worry about what players do not care about.