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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 7093499" data-attributes="member: 6801060">But seriously, now that I'm home and can look at the maps and do the calculations...Both SCAG and SKT give some insight to the area around Waterdeep. From the descriptions, it appears the area between the Dessarin River, the Sword Mountains, and Amphail - Goldenfields axis is pretty much the agricultural hinterland for Waterdeep; Amphail in SCAG and Goldenfields in SKT are both explicitly described as agricultural centers dedicated to funneling food towards the city. That area is a rough square, 40 to 50 miles to each side, given the scale in SKT. Even going for the smaller dimensions, a square 40 miles to the side is 2000 square miles, and with 640 acres to the square mile, that's 1.28 million acres of land. Even if only a third of that is arable and in production, that's more than enough acreage (given even your estimate of 1 person fed per 1 acre of land) to feed Waterdeep, its small satellite towns (the two mentioned and Rassalantar village) and still even have leftovers for export! And that's not even bringing magic, fishing, or imports into the equation. And once you leave that zone...Looking at the map - that's an incredibly small area compared to the vastness of the northern Sword Coast region!. And after Waterdeep, only Neverwinter, Luskan, Mirabar, Silverymoon, and Everlund are likely to be in the 10,000+ zone; they were the settlements in that vicinity in 3e, with the largest being Silverymoon at 37,000 or so, but who knows how population growth and a century of catastrophes have affected their populations since then (which is why I didn't include Sundabar, which also had 10,000+ in 3e, but is basically a smoking ruin now). Even if Silverymoon is as large as it once was, even using your estimate of 1 person fed per 1 acre, the city would need at maximum 57 square miles of cropland to feed it; even accounting for nonarable land and no magic help, that could easily be contained in a square 10 to 15 miles per side (100 to 225 square miles), which yet again is pretty negligible given the size of the North. Basically, discounting the intensively farmed area around Waterdeep described above, even in its most densely populated areas (the coast, the lower Dessarin valley, and the old Silver Marches), you're basically going to have a few square miles of farmland around settlements, then 20 - 50 miles of wilderness between the various settlements, even along well-traveled roads and rivers, let alone the vast unsettled areas such as the High Forest and the Evermoors. Even in Waterdeep's case, once you're more than two days ride outside the city, you're in wilderness. So there's plenty of room for wilderness in the setting...</blockquote>

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