So i've been building a campaign world that i've been trying to go more realistic with than the typical high fantasy setting that D&D worlds tend to be. So far I think i've been doing alright, I have a map of the continent with major cities and nations but its the local stuff i'm having some issues with. Particularly with the "points of light in darkness" concept which i like but am having some trouble adapting to a world with fairly established nations.
The main nation the campaign is set in i did my best to model off of the Holy Roman Empire with strong local nobles and a weak central government which has allowed me to keep the setting fairly wild still but there are some things I would love some assistance with.I see the empire somewhat like the empire in Warhammer (which is also based somewhat off the holy roman empire) where on the outside it seems like a stong nation but when you get closer you see that there is still a great deal of danger in the world, secret cults, dangrous forests, local rulers being corrupt or inefficient ect ect but i'm not sure if it will be enough to make the campaign dark and really let the players shine as heroes.
I have cut down the races a bit to make it less high magic and instead of danger being from orc hordes or gnoll raiders it stems more from inter noble conflicts, bandits, and the occasional rogue cleric/mage
In essence my issues are thus;
-population of villages and their distance from one another. I figured that hamlets would have a population of around 500, towns of around 2-5,000 and cities 15,000+ the problem is I don't know if those numbers are too high/too low. There are a handful of metropolis sized cities with around 100,000 people but there aren’t many of them. The dmg recommends Hamlet up to 1000, town 1-10,000 and cities 10,000-25,000 but the hamlet and town sizes seem awfully large to me, then again im not an expert on medieval society.
-Distance between population centers. I figured about 20 to 50 miles between population centers would be fine with shorter distances in heaver populated areas and longer distances in sparser ones, but once again i don’t know enough to know if that’s too far or too short.
-Magic items. The world is fairly low magic, the biggest cities will have grand temples and mage academies while normal sized cities would have a handful of clerics and magi, towns would have a cleric and potentially a mage while in the hamlets magic would be almost unheard of and even frightening. The problem with this is how do i get magic items or training to the players? If they are in a rural area I cant expect them to lug around piles of gold until they happen upon a city down the road, but at the same time I want to have an atmosphere of low magic where the heroes are definitely extraordinary.
-Points of light in the darkness. How spread apart and disorganized can i really make this nation before its pointless to even have an overarching nation, I like the idea of twenty or so noble families paying nominal heed to an emperor but fighting amongst themselves, but i want to make sure it works rather than just say it is because i say so.
Any help, ideas, or historical examples are appreciated.
How prevalent is the magic in your world?
This isn't strictly high/low magic scale, if magic items are fairly common, then the distances and population of villages will change accordingly. A good example of why is the distances of small farm towns in the western US to the Ukraine and other parts of the bread basket of Europe (France for instance) as technology allowed for greater travel per day, so to did villages/hamlets spread from their origins.
If its strictly roman times, you probably have at least a hamlet every 12-18 miles, if we introduce either magically enchanted roads or magical items that are somewhat common that improve speed (Or elves with the feat to improve overland speed) then the distance will adjust accordingly.
Your populations to my gut seem roughly right, I could do some digging in my old history books to see if it needs some adjusting, I do recall that near the height of Tacitus that Rome was around a million people. (I know that several cities in India/China burst the million mark in the last first century BCE/ early first CE).
One of the bigger factors on population limits in a given area is going to be home rich the soil is, and its acre to person fed ratio. If you are shooting for Western European around the peak of the empire figure on 1.6 acres per person being fed from the farm land. So fr a city of one hundred thousand you need 160,000 acres roughly (about 250 miles square around the city) of dedicated farm land, this amount can be up to about a week's travel away with out losing too much of the produce (further if its going to be meat imported, as the slaughter of animals can happen closer to the city's heart).
Rocky/hilly terrain will reduce the amount of arable land by some degree depending on the severity of the slope, if its older capped ranges (like the apalachians) then figure they need 2 full acres, if its extremely mountainous (like the rockies) figure 5-6 acres instead of the 1.6 acres.
Edit> Oh, ancient empires literally stretched until they broke, so as long as this empire of yours isn't running into an organized force able to stop them they can continue to expand. That being said Rome herself was usually co-emporered, and figure no more than about six months of travel by horse in any direction is going to be under strong control. (Which is part of the reason why there was usually an emperor of th East and emperor of the West). Underneath a single dynamic leader it is potentially possible for a large empire to exist that would exceed those limits (like Alexander or Darius the Great's) but it would be uncommon and very unlikely to withstand the death of that leader. Rome would usually have petty kingdoms that were tributaries of their nation, who paid them taxes so the romans wouldn't kill them all.
How prevalent is the magic in your world?
This isn't strictly high/low magic scale, if magic items are fairly common, then the distances and population of villages will change accordingly. A good example of why is the distances of small farm towns in the western US to the Ukraine and other parts of the bread basket of Europe (France for instance) as technology allowed for greater travel per day, so to did villages/hamlets spread from their origins.
If its strictly roman times, you probably have at least a hamlet every 12-18 miles, if we introduce either magically enchanted roads or magical items that are somewhat common that improve speed (Or elves with the feat to improve overland speed) then the distance will adjust accordingly.
Your populations to my gut seem roughly right, I could do some digging in my old history books to see if it needs some adjusting, I do recall that near the height of Tacitus that Rome was around a million people. (I know that several cities in India/China burst the million mark in the last first century BCE/ early first CE).
One of the bigger factors on population limits in a given area is going to be home rich the soil is, and its acre to person fed ratio. If you are shooting for Western European around the peak of the empire figure on 1.6 acres per person being fed from the farm land. So fr a city of one hundred thousand you need 160,000 acres roughly (about 250 miles square around the city) of dedicated farm land, this amount can be up to about a week's travel away with out losing too much of the produce (further if its going to be meat imported, as the slaughter of animals can happen closer to the city's heart).
Rocky/hilly terrain will reduce the amount of arable land by some degree depending on the severity of the slope, if its older capped ranges (like the apalachians) then figure they need 2 full acres, if its extremely mountainous (like the rockies) figure 5-6 acres instead of the 1.6 acres.
The way I had the concept of magic worked up was somewhat tolkienesqe, with magic items being more common than magic users themselves. As for magical transportation I would say fairly limited, some extreamly well of nobles or high level cleric/magi might be able to procure something to get them from A to B faster but for 99% of the population horses are going to be the fastest mode available.
I pictured a western european setting, particularly Germany/Northeast France/Belgium/Netherlands with cold winters, plenty of forest, but good farmland particularly near river basins and the like. I imagined a level of technology somewhere between 900 and 1300a.d. where things like water and windmills are available but not gunpowder.
From what I found some cities in that time (particularly middle eastern, byzantine, and chinese) had populations upwards of 100,000 but it was the exception to the rule so I placed a little under 50 cities with populations exceeding 75,000 in a continent that is roughly 4400 miles by 1000 miles. (which i think ends up being slightly large than europe in square miles) While this is a higher amount of large population centers than in historical europe i figured that the presence of clerics would allow for truly large cities to avoid terribly devistating plagues.
The information on the amount of farmland needed to host a large city is extreamly useful, i appreciate the help.
Glad to help 
.
It sounds like you have things pretty well off, with magic being that uncommon (both item and caster wise) it won't affect the population of areas too significantly.
How strong is the evil element of your world going to be, not just the human evils of the corrupt and deprived but the innate evil of demons and monsters who prey on humans and other civilized beings.
I say this because there were no monster and troll tribes that the roman empire had to guard its citizens from. No rampaging dragons who preyed upon ALL creatures in their territories. These are issues that roman legions alone could not have been able to deal with. Their tactics and warfare involved fighting barbarians and other armies...not a horde of undead driven forth by vampires flying over the battlefield at night. Now if these monsters and evil forces are rare, sure empire can succeed with low magic...but you are going to have a fairly dry place to adventure in unless all your content is dealing with corrupt people and enemy nations.
History teaches us worldbuilders a great deal...as does tolkien and other great worldbuilders.
In tolkiens middle earth evil was on a downswing really. Yeah there were some powerful evils but they were centralized and concentrated in their own areas. The vast majority of those evils being very low level as well in D&D terms.
Now if your world assumes that there are more adventurers out there than just what makes up the players party you have some balancing acts to do to make things work and still have a low magic, low evil world.
I guess my point is that you seem to be limiting yourself by trying to make a world in which a romanesque empire can exist successfully...but you can have all kinds of fun with a world where such an empire has just collapsed due to internal corruption and an external rise in the evil creature populations.
This sets the party in a world where the fight is on to survive and hamlets are getting their stuff together and building up defenses and training up heroes to protect them so that they can even succeed. This is what I understand as the points of light concept, where the balance is out of whack and evil has much of the land under its sway.
Anyhow there is lots to discuss and many ways to build your world realistically, its all balancing.
Evening! You've come across a problem I've had to deal with many times in the past(although not in D&D, I role played through a different medium). Any way a simple google search can give you fairly good results to help you out. For example I typed in "population density in midieval times" and came up with this
Not only does it cover some simple things about your question(about population density) it breaks it up into simple terms, charts, and even goes on to explain the division of labor(which may also be useful). There's literally dozens of these sites out there. If you see variation in percentages or figures that is because they may use different countries as a reference.
Hope that helped some.
The absolute, no-holds barred best source for what you're attempting is A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (available from RPGnow.com). It's got everything you need to know about historical Europe, and makes some assumptions about how society changes based on the assumptions in the core rules. It gets a bit thick at times, but if you're a world-builder, it's a great resource.
The only downside is that its default "magical society" assumptions are based on those given in the Third Edition rules, so you have to make some adjustments for 4e. Mostly, those allow you to scale back towards the default setting of Medieval Western Europe, since 4th Edition doesn't have quite the same demographic assumptions (mostly about the prevalence of classed characters and spellcasters) that 3e does.
I recommend a little more reading about the Holy Roman Empire. Charelemagne's kingdom was essentially what you're talking about - from the standpoint of rulership and control, that is.
Sounds like an interesting setting.
How strong is the evil element of your world going to be, not just the human evils of the corrupt and deprived but the innate evil of demons and monsters who prey on humans and other civilized beings.
I say this because there were no monster and troll tribes that the roman empire had to guard its citizens from. No rampaging dragons who preyed upon ALL creatures in their territories. These are issues that roman legions alone could not have been able to deal with. Their tactics and warfare involved fighting barbarians and other armies...not a horde of undead driven forth by vampires flying over the battlefield at night. Now if these monsters and evil forces are rare, sure empire can succeed with low magic...but you are going to have a fairly dry place to adventure in unless all your content is dealing with corrupt people and enemy nations.
History teaches us worldbuilders a great deal...as does tolkien and other great worldbuilders.
In tolkiens middle earth evil was on a downswing really. Yeah there were some powerful evils but they were centralized and concentrated in their own areas. The vast majority of those evils being very low level as well in D&D terms.
Now if your world assumes that there are more adventurers out there than just what makes up the players party you have some balancing acts to do to make things work and still have a low magic, low evil world.
I guess my point is that you seem to be limiting yourself by trying to make a world in which a romanesque empire can exist successfully...but you can have all kinds of fun with a world where such an empire has just collapsed due to internal corruption and an external rise in the evil creature populations.
This sets the party in a world where the fight is on to survive and hamlets are getting their stuff together and building up defenses and training up heroes to protect them so that they can even succeed. This is what I understand as the points of light concept, where the balance is out of whack and evil has much of the land under its sway.
Anyhow there is lots to discuss and many ways to build your world realistically, its all balancing.
Well, the way I had it figured is that there would be a few things that made the world dangerous. Roads and cities have been established to the point that most of the time they are safe, heavily populated areas have to worry more about foreign invasion than monster attacks (except maybe in areas like the sewers)
In the outlying regions though life is dangerous, road bandits are a serious problem and the ability for these groups to link up with cultists makes them even more so. Additionally in these less populated areas monsters still live in the forests, trolls, giants, and ogres can easily raid and destroy hamlets while tribes of lizardfolk or gnolls exist in the untamed areas occasionally coming out to raid travelers or even raid villages.
Dragons exist and occasionally dragons will attack heavily populated areas and do serious damage, but those attacks are rare and often dangerous for the dragons to perform since that would result in powerful knights, clerics, magi, ect gathering to put an end to the assault.
Cults are abound that worship dangerous entities, sometimes summoning demons and other horrors to the world, they can hold sway over nobles promising them wealth or power. Secret cults can fester over and create terrible forces that can wreck towns or even cities and force everyone in the area to put aside other conflicts to battle the more serious threat.
I had an idea of something similar to Warhammer, there is constant danger in the woodlands, there could be bandits, cultists, monsters, or just about anything else in the less traveled areas while in the cities there is always something dangerous festering "underground", be it an underdark city of kobolds, a powerful secret cult, or a powerful thieves guild.
True and powerful evil would exist, it’s just that heroes are there as well constantly battling with it, creating an uncomfortable stalemate. I guess I’m talking about a world that’s not so much points of light in dark but pints of grey in grey. There is always evil somewhere, but at the same time there are always heroes, the standard armies of the nation protect it from other nations or other mundane threats while academies of magi, temples, and heroic soldiers have to deal with threats a normal militia would never be able to handle.
You bring up a lot of good points though because that's my primary worry, how do I make the world as real as I can without making it dry? I guess my goal is to somehow mesh ideas from traditional D&D worlds and less traditional ones, I want danger and dark magic but at the same time I want to add the aspect of nation politics and war to the world as well. Your example of middle-earth is a good one and hopefully I can use some examples from that to make my world less mundane so to speak, thanks for the help.
The absolute, no-holds barred best source for what you're attempting is A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (available from RPGnow.com). It's got everything you need to know about historical Europe, and makes some assumptions about how society changes based on the assumptions in the core rules. It gets a bit thick at times, but if you're a world-builder, it's a great resource.
The only downside is that its default "magical society" assumptions are based on those given in the Third Edition rules, so you have to make some adjustments for 4e. Mostly, those allow you to scale back towards the default setting of Medieval Western Europe, since 4th Edition doesn't have quite the same demographic assumptions (mostly about the prevalence of classed characters and spellcasters) that 3e does.
I recommend a little more reading about the Holy Roman Empire. Charelemagne's kingdom was essentially what you're talking about - from the standpoint of rulership and control, that is.
Sounds like an interesting setting.
Thanks for the advice on the book, ill definitely look into it, something like that is exactly what i couldn’t find, some condensed information about the subject of fantasy medieval life.
As for the Holy Roman Empire thing, I imagined a post Barbarossa post Interregnum society, at least culturally. (post 1250 ish) This is when the power of the emperor was pretty much null and void while the princes had control over huge amounts of land really only paying nominal heed to the emperor. This is what eventually allowed Prussia, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands to all become separate countries and was what led to the treaty of Westphalia.
I figured that the emphasis on stronger local power in the hands of Dukes and Princes would create more conflict and corruption, they could fight amongst themselves (like the Hapsburgs, Luxemburg’s, and Wittlesbach essentially did in the mid 1300's) while at the same time they all pay this nominal heed to the emperor to create an image of a large unified nation which would help prevent foreign invasion by more unified nations.
Middle age France is another similar concept, a weak national head with some land given nominal heed by powerful dukes with huge duchies.
From what i understood the Carloginian empire was more about the conflicts of the decedents eventually leading to the formation of the holy Roman Empire and France rather than princes and dukes with power.
Well, there's always the tried and true approach taken by a lot of fantasy stories.
In the distant past, when the Empire was founded, its rulers had access to much more powerful magic. There was an order of wizards, religious order, a supremely powerful knightly order, or some other group that was especially skilled at keeping the dark forces of the world contained (ancient wall optional).
As centuries have passed, the threat posed by the dark forces have begun to be considered more as fairy tales and superstition. Perhaps there was actually been a diminishing of their strength - a plague that swept the goblin tribes, restricting them to being more nuisance than serious threat.
Now though, things seem to be changing. Orcs and goblins have been seen where none have been sighted in centuries. And where small raiding parties have been seen before, now serious warbands are showing up. And stories tell that an actual DRAGON has been seen...
But the powers that be haven't yet taken notice. They dither and feud over matters of territory, while, in the North (east, west, south), a great threat is looming. This world needs heroes...
Okay, it's slightly derivative. It's a little bit Tolkien, a little bit Wheel of Time, and a little bit A Song of Ice and Fire. However, nothing requires our worlds to be completely original. And the concept of there being a fine balance between the forces of civilization (light) and those of darkness goes a long way to explaining why D&D worlds have never progressed beyond medieval technology. Like our own world up until basically the Renaissance, civilizations just don't generally endure long enough to make lasting changes.
But yes, in a world as dangerous as the D&D one is, the forces of good (or civilization) have to have magic or mighty heroes at their command in order to roll back the darkness. Then those whose mighty deeds made an empire possible die and their accomplishments eventually fall to the oppressive weight of a dangerous world.
It's not that hard to justify.
Evening! You've come across a problem I've had to deal with many times in the past(although not in D&D, I role played through a different medium). Any way a simple google search can give you fairly good results to help you out. For example I typed in "population density in midieval times" and came up with this
Not only does it cover some simple things about your question(about population density) it breaks it up into simple terms, charts, and even goes on to explain the division of labor(which may also be useful). There's literally dozens of these sites out there. If you see variation in percentages or figures that is because they may use different countries as a reference.
Hope that helped some.
There is some great information on this site, thanks.
Well, there's always the tried and true approach taken by a lot of fantasy stories.
In the distant past, when the Empire was founded, its rulers had access to much more powerful magic. There was an order of wizards, religious order, a supremely powerful knightly order, or some other group that was especially skilled at keeping the dark forces of the world contained (ancient wall optional).
As centuries have passed, the threat posed by the dark forces have begun to be considered more as fairy tales and superstition. Perhaps there was actually been a diminishing of their strength - a plague that swept the goblin tribes, restricting them to being more nuisance than serious threat.
Now though, things seem to be changing. Orcs and goblins have been seen where none have been sighted in centuries. And where small raiding parties have been seen before, now serious warbands are showing up. And stories tell that an actual DRAGON has been seen...
But the powers that be haven't yet taken notice. They dither and feud over matters of territory, while, in the North (east, west, south), a great threat is looming. This world needs heroes...
Okay, it's slightly derivative. It's a little bit Tolkien, a little bit Wheel of Time, and a little bit A Song of Ice and Fire. However, nothing requires our worlds to be completely original. And the concept of there being a fine balance between the forces of civilization (light) and those of darkness goes a long way to explaining why D&D worlds have never progressed beyond medieval technology. Like our own world up until basically the Renaissance, civilizations just don't generally endure long enough to make lasting changes.
But yes, in a world as dangerous as the D&D one is, the forces of good (or civilization) have to have magic or mighty heroes at their command in order to roll back the darkness. Then those whose mighty deeds made an empire possible die and their accomplishments eventually fall to the oppressive weight of a dangerous world.
It's not that hard to justify.
while maybe a bit cliché that might work perfectly for me, the original founders of the empire decades ago gathered forces to inspiration leaders and carved out large areas, pacifying the locals and driving out the worst of the monsters letting cities and towns to expand, but over time the inspiration leaders died out and their successors became weaker and weaker, now those who have any real power are petty lords and dukes only looking to expand their chunk of power rather than what might be best for the whole nation. At the same time these monsters and evil forces that were once smashed and driven away are now seeping back into this fragmented society and gaining power as everything begins to fall apart. The ancient dragons may have been mostly slain a few hundred years ago but now their hatchlings are older and tougher, and ready to take vengeance for what happened those many years ago.
Those powerful temples and academies of magic are now more focused on their own prestige or power rather than on doing what’s right, maybe their orders have fragmented among themselves creating rivals mage circles or different schools of religious thought which further divide the nations power against a new threat.
Honestly you just worked magic for me, that’s something that makes sense in the larger scheme of things, is completely justifiable, and won’t take much to implement at all. Now all I have to do is read up on how to build towns and I think I might have a campaign setting, I appreciate the help.
Happy to help! I've been working on a similar idea myself, since most of my favorite fantasy novels are "dark fantasy" that involve both low-end gritty stuff and political wrangling. But I'm entranced by high fantasy too. It's always a conundrum what to do.
And the swashbuckler in me has always loved the idea of a high seas adventure campaign, but I haven't been able to work out a way to make that fly with all of the classes in D&D. Some of them are very focused on heavy armor, and almost all of them use more armor than your traditional swashbuckler type characters.
Happy to help! I've been working on a similar idea myself, since most of my favorite fantasy novels are "dark fantasy" that involve both low-end gritty stuff and political wrangling. But I'm entranced by high fantasy too. It's always a conundrum what to do.
And the swashbuckler in me has always loved the idea of a high seas adventure campaign, but I haven't been able to work out a way to make that fly with all of the classes in D&D. Some of them are very focused on heavy armor, and almost all of them use more armor than your traditional swashbuckler type characters.
I was thinking about an eventual "expansion" to the continent that were a set of islands similar to indonesia or the carribean where there are merchant ships and pirates myself, I figured that a handful of colonies in a forign land would work well for both a sense of high seas adventure and exploration, pirate battles at seas and then exporation of unknown jungles where native tribes still hold sway, I figured having the handful of colonies would allow for land combat while still feeling like a high seas type deal.