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#1 Zardnaar Feb 16, 2015 17:42:16

This is more of a game theory thread in regards to building your campaign world than a thread about mechanics. Generally fantasy worlds tend to often go for bigger is better when compared to the pre-industrial world. Walls for example can be truly massive such as The Wall from Game of Thrones (700’ high) the walls of Kaag from Joe Devers Magnamund (2km high) or the city satte of Ur Draxa from Darksun which was The Dragons sanctum. The Theodisan walls of Constantinople were 50' high IRL.    I generally do try and make my cities make a certain amount of sense and a for a realistic size and/or location. There may be a few exceptions to that where magic is involved and cities may exist floating in the clouds or in lcations that could not normally support a population that size. Perhaps the city has multiple decanters of endless water for example and there is a reason that item doesn’t exist on Darksun.    Now the stereotypical fantasy world is medieval Europe normally some sort of faux England/France type society. Serfs and peasants are usually stupid and illiterate and some sort of exotic or more civilized eastern land often exists usually modelled after the Arabs/China/Egypt. Faerun, Mystara and Golarion would be notorious examples of this.    Fantasy might be somewhat Eurocentric but for the most part it was invented by Europeans drawing heavily on European mythology and legends with influence form other cultures of course. Fantasy Ninjas and monks are basically based on bad Kung Fu movies and TV shows from the 70’s. What I am more interested in is looking at is how do build a world for your campaign. There is no right or wrong way to do this IMHO I prefer to try and make most of my worlds plausible however.  Generally humans IRL settle near water. Most of the cities in the ancient world and early civilizations were on the coast or rivers. China, Sumeria, Egypt and the Indus Valley civilizations would be examples of this. A quick look at the capitals of Europe will also confirm this as well- London, Paris, Budapest, Rome etc. There are a few exceptions like Constantinople but that was a port city fed by aqueducts. Water is important for obvious reasons as you need something to drink, wash in and often they were used as sewers as well.    Some RPGs also go as far as to recommend how to place cites and how often you could place them with Adventurer Conquer King being one example and old TSR era sourcebooks also covered this in various detail. What counts as a city also depends on the time period as 8000 people counts as a town these days but in 2000BC that would have been a city. A small city in D&D terms I think would be around 10-20 000 people. A large city might go up to around 50-60 000 people and London in the 16th or 17th century would be an example of this.    Now getting much larger than this is quite difficult. Food supplies are one issue, water and sanitation are other issues. Very few cities in the world passed the 100 000 people mark in the pre industrial world and only a handful reached 200 000 inhabitants or more. Almost none of the megacities were actually in Europe. Some examples of 100 000+ inhabitants would be Alexandria, Damascus, and Venice which were major cities in the post Roman world. For 200 000+ one would be looking at Imperial Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, several Chinese cities and Teotihuacan.  Most of the megacites were capitals of major empires with the resources and engineering skills to maintain them and supply them with food and water. Venice was a very rich merchant republic with a large trading fleet and was a super power of sorts at its height.    As much as people hate the Realms I did like the way they dealt with cities in the 3.0 FRCS as Waterdeep is probably slightly smaller in population than Venice and it is a major city state in the north. Populations in cities also fluctuate with things like plague, war and a collapse of empire being major factors in their development. For example 1st century Rome had a population of perhaps a million inhabitants that dwindled to 30-50000 people after the collapse of the Roman empire as the aqueducts fell into disrepair and food supplies from Egypt ceased. Constantinople’s population was perhaps 50 000 when it fell to the Turks in 1453 and the Byzantines Empires cities in general seemed to shrink in the 8th century with the loss of Egypt to the Arabs.  The black plague killed around 1 in 3 in parts of Europe in the 14th century as well.    In ye olde fantasy worlds however magic can reduce the effects of real life problems. One could have magical water fountains drawing water from the elemental planes while or perhaps garbage disposal via the elemental plane of fire or magical street lights. Waterdeep has extradimensional grave yards while the catacombs of Rome were used as a graveyard as well. Generally I would not do this to much however unless you have a magocracy or similar society or world such as Eberron or perhaps Spell jammer. One could have a city such as Rome or Constantinople exist after the fall of an empire though as a magical water source could keep functioning long after a real life aqueduct would clog up. Such a city state could be a relic of a bygone age. Cure disease/lesser restoration spells could not stop the black plague but they could keep the elites alive.     Such locations could also be in far off lands or one could work them into a plot or theme of the campaign. I draw on history all the time and often you can change the names or situation slightly and PC actions can change the fate of the world. For example perhaps there is a city state with functioning magical water fountains that is the cultural centre of the world  that has survived the fall of an empire or has risen to recent prominence (Venice). That city is now under siege by Orcs/Hobgoblins (Ottomans) and the last Pope/Doge/Emperor needs heroes to save that city and as a reward that figure can rise them to the nobility and grant lands and titles to the PCs or a town house/villa with all the latest magical mod cons that money can’t buy being the remnants of a glorious past.    And since magic exists one can tie plotlines to the city location in your world. For example the Romans suffered a massive defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest IRL. One could tie this back to a fantasy Venice/Constantinople under siege by Orc/Hobgoblins/Undead. Rather than having several legions wiped out in battle perhaps those legions are under a magical stasis effect and sealed away in a demiplane. In my World the Romans are Thyatians (from Mystara) and the Empire has been gone for 300 years. If some PCs of name level  (level 9-14 range) manage to retrieve those legions not only have they saved the last city of XYZ empire they now have the means to rebuild that empire with 2 or 3 legions.    One could also tie that to backgrounds or languages the PCs know or have used in downtime. One of my players for example is using downtime to learn the Thyatian language which could come in handy later on should I run a scenario like this. The return of the shade on Faerun with 3.0 would be a D&D example of a lost city using supernatural means to return to the present, a more mundane way would be have political survivor states of fallen empires turn up in remote or hidden locations. Perhaps your worlds version of the Romans crossed the Atlantic and settled the valley of Mexico or Carthagian survivors sailed to fantasy South Africa and rebuilt their civilization there. A neo Incan fantasy empire could arise again from a hidden Machu Picchu.    Just some things to think about. I like tying various threads together on my worlds to build a sandbox. That statue in the dungeon that is worth 1000gp might be a lost Thyatian masterpiece worth 10 times that amount to a collector or other interested party. That headband of intellect with Thyatian writing on that could have belonged to a fantasy Julius Caesar. When world building I like to use semi realistic/plausible cities and then I might have a fantasy twist somewhere perhaps tied to events in the distant past. After all who built the Caves of Chaos and why? Maybe the Thyatians did or the Netherise and perhaps the equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria lies hidden behind a secret door or wall. Perhaps it was an under ground place of refuge to dodge the Spellplague/Rain of Colorless Fire/Day of a Thousand Suns type apocalypse. You do not always need to think this up in advance but I always try and run with it iif the PCs get interested.