Winterhaven Capsule Hotels

[invokethehojo]

Here's how it breaks down:

40-50 Merchants and townsfolk (in the 17 buildings)
100-150 Farmers and their families in the outlying area

800 cultists of Orcus in the sewers and catacombs beneath the town.

Nice

 

[vagabundo]

Erm didn't we establish earlier that one square mile of farmland supports about 180 people. So you need to more than double the area you've shown, and that doesn't look like particularly great farmland from the map.

The kobold lair and even the keep would be within the area of the outlying farms. If you just assumed a circle from Winterhaven. But the farms are more likely to spread out along the roads.

Still the population seems very high for the small area shown.

I think that was done using medieval avg population density. It would be interesting to see what the population density was during the Dark Ages, probably similar to a POL setting.

I based the land area on the minimum that would support the population (977) somewhere around 1.5 to 3 square miles (the square above is around 2 square miles). I chose a square because it was easier for me to create, but I agree: population would tend to cluster around the main roads and probably the west and south of the town as the land looks better. It looks worse for the kobolds as they are in some prime real estate.

The mountains to the north could be used for grazing animals (cows, sheep and then goats). So I'd expect a grey zone, where shepard's would bring their flocks, a little outside the comfortable safe zone of the walled village and well populated farms. The shepard would want to be handy with the Quarter staff, in that case.

I think the map above sould not look quite so barren and the farmlands should be on it (patchwork), with a load of little roads (Bodhreen) connecting the farm houses.

 

[Voss]

Agreed, everything is a little tight. But I assume that the buildings inside the walls are at least two story. I can see a busy cramped little village.

Maybe the bigger ones, but probably not the thatched homes. Multistory building doesn't strike me as a common thing for this type of settlement

I dont think you would need to cut the population down. The proximity of the kobold could be a problem, it depends on whats in the adventure, and why they are there.


I've shaded a two square mile square around the main town. This land would be populated by farm houses and small roads, around 800 people.

It seems very close to the Kobolds, so it really depends what they are doing there.

I assume, given the normal behavior of kobolds in D&D, that they're eating people's babies. I like your highlighted region... its about what I'd guess at too, but the se corner seems unviable since so much of it is closer to the kobolds than the village. Thats effectively a death sentence.

Though it seems unlikely (from the description) that they actually use that entire area- just small chunks of it)

 

[thalmin]

The module describes the village as a remnant of the last empire, thus the walls. As to the kobolds raiding the farms, think of The Magnificent Seven, where the village was raided just enough to satisfy the banditos but not so much as to eliminate their source of groceries/amusement.

 

[vagabundo]

I assume, given the normal behavior of kobolds in D&D, that they're eating people's babies. I like your highlighted region... its about what I'd guess at too, but the se corner seems unviable since so much of it is closer to the kobolds than the village. Thats effectively a death sentence.

Though it seems unlikely (from the description) that they actually use that entire area- just small chunks of it)

From a closer look at the map it seems that those are trees. I'd expect a lot of that to be cleared land.

 

[loseth]

977 people is a huge village by medieval standards. Not unheard of, but definitely very rare. But, in any case, 17 buildings of note and a stone wall sounds more like a small town than a village, and I think Winterhaven would make more sense seen in that light. As a town, it could support a large part of its population through trade. There might also be a magical food source, which would IMHO make a lot more sense than having farms outside the walls when there's a kobold lair so near.

Though I haven't seen the module yet, I would guess that my homebrew fix would be something like:

--Winterhaven is a town [i.e. walled market-centre with large non-farming population], not a village [i.e. agricultural settlement with minimal non-farming population].
--Winterhaven receives much of its food in the form of grain coming in from outlying villages for which Winterhaven serves as the market town. Some of this grain is bought by the residents of Winterhaven and the rest is bought by merchants and taken by caravan to the nearest port.
--Within its walls, Winterhaven has a small magical orchard that can feed about 300 people comfortably or about 1000 on minimal rations.
--Not shown on the map are many tenement buildings that house the majority of the population.
--Also not shown are the many small workshops in which the majority of the population make their living.

Edit: Spelling

 

[Celebrim]

Better, but counting the rural population in the town's population is really misleading. If I read that there are 977 people in the town, I'm going to assume that means 977 or so people in town plus another 5000 or so people scattered around the 'barony' in villages of 40-200 people spaced about every two miles in every direction around the town. I would assume that the town was the center of a largely agrarian community stretching about 12 miles in every direction around the town. I would further assume that the kobold lair was itself a sort of village, and that it had a suitable buffer of several miles around it so that the kobolds could normally forage and hunt without coming into direct conflict with thier neighbors. Since kobolds aren't agrarian I'd assume they'd need at least 4-8 miles of buffer to support themselves given the low productivity of hunting and gathering. If this buffer didn't exist, the only way to explain the kobolds presense was that a) they just arrived, b) they had a death wish for moving so close to a hostile, better armed, and much larger human community. How convienent that they'd offer themselves up as XP like that...

But if the town represented a true border town in a hostile environment, I'd assume that the 977 people all lived within the safety of the town walls and farmed the towns immediate vicinity. In which case, I'd expect to see at least 40-50 buildings in the town, or at least 80-100 if we are mostly talking simple thatched wattle and dung cottages. In the surroundings I'd only expect a small (100-200) rural population of the very very poor and the very very self-sufficient - many of whom would survive by actually being allies of the local non-human population (witches, crazy hermits, cultists, lycanthropes, minanthrops, half-breeds etc.). There might a few good apples in the bunch (rangers, retired adventurers, nature priests, your better sort of druid, ecentric wizards), but these would be naturally distrusted by the city folk.

The other thing to keep in mind is that unless this is a garrison town, a town of 977 people probably has 8-10 full time soldiers.

The layout provided is for kids. The lairs of evil are too close. There isn't enough farm land on the map (vagabundo provides a good illustration), and the rural population isn't sufficiently detailed regardless of the demographics in use. It's the wilderness equivalent of a dungeon filled with disparate creatures that have no lives outside of waiting for the PC's to show up to kill them, never eat, never defecate, and never leave the particular room that they are in.

 

[hong]

The layout provided is for kids.

You say this like it's a negative thing.

It's the wilderness equivalent of a dungeon filled with disparate creatures that have no lives outside of waiting for the PC's to show up to kill them, never eat, never defecate,

The lack of dungeons with toilets is indeed a sad commentary on the current state of affairs. Why, a whole generation of gamers has grown up without the experience of fighting a poo elemental. This is something that sorely needs addressing, and I, for one, hope WotC will listen. WotC, we need poo elementals, and we need them now. Who's with me?

 

[Wormwood]

It's the wilderness equivalent of a dungeon filled with disparate creatures that have no lives outside of waiting for the PC's to show up to kill them, never eat, never defecate, and never leave the particular room that they are in.

When not in use, my NPCs are content to hang out backstage and practice their lines.

 

[Celebrim]

You say this like it's a negative thing.

If I were 12, it wouldn't be. But my tastes have changed since I was 12 and I expect a richer, livelier, more dynamic environment than what this provides. At the very least, I expect a base environment - however simple - that doesn't require major changes to make it into something for grownups as well.

The lack of dungeons with toilets is indeed a sad commentary on the current state of affairs.

I don't believe that that is what I said. Many dungeons are converted dwellings originally purposed for something else. You wouldn't expect these to have toilets. You would expect that living inhabitants would have access to sufficient food and water sources and if not prisoners then the ability to enter and egress thier chosen lair. Putting a toilet in a dungeon doesn't necessarily even make sense, but if I wanted dungeons with 20'x20' rooms containing ancient red dragons linked by 10' corridors then we could just use adventures written by your average 10 year old and save ourselves the $19.95 (or whatever) WotC plans to charge us for this gem.