D&D General World size and climates (Eberron population vs size)

[Krachek]

I think professional setting create an expectation to build planet size setting for home brew.
Most of the time it is no use.

all geographical error can be explain using fantasy or magical implication.
a lake with no water source? no problem, at the bottom there is a nexus to the elemental water plane that produce continual water.

Lack of population can be explained by past war, on going curse, malediction and so on.

don’t pretend to create a realistic historical setting if you don’t have to knowledge to do so.
otherwise dm need to become an expert in geographic, economic, social trait, warfare, plus the implication of magic on top of that. Dm will continually trying to patch errors they made to correct previous errors.

anyway just look at most movie and tv show, they make very funny short cut to build up their world. in Star Wars most planet is condensed into a far west town size society.

 

[Laurefindel]

The thing with Eberron is that we know it's technologically and culturally similar to the 19th century, and the nations are organized similar to Europe and North America. For that to work, you'd need population densities at least roughly comparable. And the original map scale for Eberron was way off that many times.
A continent with that size of area and size of population could exist, but it would be a setting more like Australia than Europe.

IIRC, population of France during the Napoleonic wars (circa 1800), an era that matches the cultural and technological level of Eberron IMO (if you want to keep it pre-industrial, or at least pre-steam), was around 40-something millions. A 43M Breland in a Khorvaire where all distances are reduced by half makes it a good turn-of-the-19th-century Europe analogue.

I love sparsely populated medieval settings and I love Eberron, but they aren't the same at all.

 

[éxypnos]

IIRC, population of France during the Napoleonic wars (circa 1800), an era that matches the cultural and technological level of Eberron IMO (if you want to keep it pre-industrial, or at least pre-steam), was around 40-something millions.

France in 1800 had about 29 million inhabitants.

 

[Laurefindel]

A common solution to the perceived problem of Eberron having "too few people", with Sharn being very empty with 200,000 inhabitants for example, is to multiply the numbers by whatever fit your fancy (I've seen x10 often). The second most common solution is to reduce the distances (so countries like Breland don't have wide swath of empty, uncultivated area and a density similar to that of Siberia). I can see the interest in reducing distances, and I have seen map with a proposed reduced scales on reddit.

However, I know next to nothing about climate, and I wouldn't want players who might have their suspension of disbelief broken by population figures complain about the abruptness of climate transition. Northern Khorvaire has icecaps, Sharn is tropical... So my question is : if the whole world was smaller, could the climate change that much over a fewer distance, or does the variety of environment relies on having roughly Earth-sized planet?

[I'd like this thread not to devolve into "don't play with players who complain about population figures", if possible, I am just asking the collective wisdom about which of the two solutions feels better before implementing one].

Thanks in advence for your thoughts.

Khorvaire is also a (relatively) contained island, meaning that there are seas and oceans all around. A lot of these climate variations are most likely due to oceanic currents, in turn affecting weather patterns and air currents, rather than latitude proper. Southern Breland and Zilargo are probably made warmer by southern current from the coasts of Xendrik, and northern Aundair made more temperate by the warm waters of the Scion Sound. Karrnath is colder at the same latitude. Something seems to keep moisture from entering the eastern Talenta Plains and nortrhern Valenar, instead keeping it in Q'barra. Lhazzar sounds pretty temperate for its latitude, until it turns freezing cold west of Cape Far. There must be some mighty storms there! At any case, you don't need to make complete sense out of it, and the creators are probably not experienced meteorologists, but there is enough to keep disbelief in reasonable suspension.

 

[Laurefindel]

France in 1800 had about 29 million inhabitants.

opens wikipedia

...and 44 million by 1812. Wow, talk about a baby boom! geo-political expansion!

 

[éxypnos]

opens wikipedia

...and 44 million by 1812. Wow, talk about a baby boom! geo-political expansion!

Yes, 19th century France pop levels were much different than the 18th century. Really amazing considering considering how many French soldiers died from 1803 - 1812

 

[Baron Opal II]

However, I know next to nothing about climate, and I wouldn't want players who might have their suspension of disbelief broken by population figures complain about the abruptness of climate transition. Northern Khorvaire has icecaps, Sharn is tropical... So my question is : if the whole world was smaller, could the climate change that much over a fewer distance, or does the variety of environment relies on having roughly Earth-sized planet?

For the most part you don't have to worry about changes in planet size altering the climate unless you are going fantastically large or Mercury small. Even so, a basic understanding of climatology relating to worldbuilding is enough. There is a great series of YouTube videos by Artifexian that cover climates in worldbuilding exercises.

What I find lacking in Eberron is the lack of smaller countries. There aren't any Belgiums, Prussias, or Tusconys. (From what I remember anyway.) I would expect more small buffer states between the larger, more imperial countries.

 

[Azzy]

Eberron has already been shrunk. The map scale IIRC is now about 75% of what it originally was.

Can you point me to the source of this (as I want the exact number)?

 

[Yaarel]

It pretty much includes all places you'd typically think of when thinking of "the Middle Ages".

That is a pretty good map of D&D ethnocentrism.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm still not sure if I entirely agree with the problem. There may be one, but I'm not sure if the solution is to bump Breland to 43 million inhabitants as opposed to redistributing the 4.3m Brelish population around.

Ancient Rome had an estimated population of 1 million people, but the city of Rome had only about a population around 25K at the start of the 1400s, but many would still have considered it a relatively bustling city of its time, despite the fact that it was a shadow of its former glory. But there were a fair number of larger urban centers in Europe around the time of the 1400s, including in the rest of Italy, which had populations in the 200K+ range (e.g., Milan, Florence, Naples, etc.). Plus, a lot of these European cities were hammered by the Plague.

Moreover, one also has to consider that the year is 998 YK, and the continent of Khorvaire is still recovering from a one-hundred year war, which also featured its share of famine, drought, disease, and other issues. There were areas in Germany, particularly in the nothern regions, that took decades or centuries for their populations to recover from the Thirty Years War.


While there is a bit of an "early industrial feel," I think that there is also meant to evoke the European guild system, Italian merchant guilds, Hansa League, etc.

In general, I think that the problem is looking at the population of a city, nation, or continent as something static that has to conform to preconceptions without sight of the bigger picture. There still may be a problem with demography in Eberron, but the solutions may stem from misidentifying what those problems are.

The population size numbers are a big problem for eberron because it is moch closer to late 1800s early 1920s in tech & culture than ancient Rome but the actual densities are often dramatically lower than the lower populated parts of the Sahara desert. It gives a feel less like recovering from the last war than tiny isolated pockets that survived a major apocalypse if you even glance at it casually at any point
This gets especially notable with Sharn where you have a city on scales akin to all of NYC London & Tokyo all stacked endover end on the island of Manhattan with a population that is well below 10% of the small town I live in. From there it becomes instantly apparent that the population is one that makes the walking dead's look positively crowded


With the weather if you shrink it, that's different Imo because weather is complex in ways others have notedand because of manifest zones like the risia ones all over the frigid khorvaire so the fantasy excuses for weather are literally baked in with a spotlight on them in many cases.