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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9751301" data-attributes="member: 22779">The largest ship in the world at the time, the Mahmudiye, a 2500 ton, 249 foot long warship that carried 1200 sailors was built in 1828.  It had a draft of 21 feet.  That's it.  21 feet.  Now, this is incredibly anachronistic.  This is FAR outside the anachronism of D&D.  A galleon?  According to a quick search, 14-19 foot draft.  Again, ZERO need for a deep water port.  Heck, the Thames is only 60 feet deep at its deepest.  Deep water ports are around 50 feet deep.  Which you need for modern ships.  That's why places like Vancouver are such a big deal.  But for D&D level of technology, a deep water port is completely unimportant.Sure, the point of world building is to make something exciting.  Totally agree.  But, again, so many fantasy writers cannot be bothered to do any actual research, pick words that sound exciting - ooooohhhh, it's a DEEEP water port, and call it a day. As far as Stonetown is concerned, you're talking a town of 20 000 people.  It's 1/10th the size of Waterdeep.  And that's the modern population mind you.  It was smaller prior.What I find probably the most frustrating is this unwillingness to just say, "Yup, that's a bad idea.  Let's get out the magic eraser, fix that problem and make it more believable".  Nope.  Cannot do that.  It's better to pretend that the problem doesn't exist and the come up with fifteen different justifications to fix the problem.  I mean, good grief, move the mouth of the River Desserin about half an inch to the left on the map and now Waterdeep has a source of fresh water AND a means to transport goods into the interior.  Hell, add a canal.  But, nope.  The mouth of the Desserin, for some bizarre reason, about 25 miles from Waterdeep, meaning that any goods brought in by ship need to then be transported two days to Zundbridge, then loaded again onto a barge in order to transport it inland.  Or, you could simply GO to Zundbridge and avoid Waterdeep entirely because, guess what?  The ships in D&D DON'T NEED a deep water port.  <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937.png" title="Person shrugging    :person_shrugging:" data-shortname=":person_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /></blockquote>

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