Fantasy population centers, motives, and history

[AlohaRover]

A question for fantasy RPG map makers.
How much do you worry about "does this make sense"?

I have been working on my main continent map. World is larger then earth. Continent is about 8000 miles wide and 6000 miles tall. Goes from equatorial to arctic regions.

I found two posts here that go into a lot of great detail about human populations and density during the middle ages. Lots of good info I want to use. But it's based on our history, not fantasy.

Why are the different races where they are What explains the old tombs, temples, etc?

If the world is very old, lots of old stuff to your PCs to discover and explore, why is it there? or do you just not worry too much about the why?

Over the thousands of years that the world has been around the races have varied alliances and enemies, at one point or other everyone has been at war with everyone else?
One group gets too powerful and the others team up, or a plague, or a serious magic catastrophe (like a modern nuclear war) pops up and wipes things out?

Just curious what others have done with this or don't sweat it?

[Tom_Cardin]

Ahh this is a favorite subject of mine, my favorite part of worldbuilding. I think one of the most important things to decide at the start is the level and quantity of magic, both in terms of creatures and powers, items, forces etc. This is followed immediately by the age of the world, not just the age of the current civilizations but has it been around for several rises and falls. Next is connectivity to external planes, are these running in close parallel to the world where one can just find "weak" places and step right through into an elemental plane? Those sorts of places would definitely effect your geography and your populations, especially hostile planes. Also of importance at this step is the nature of the underground portion of your world, is there a version of the underdark underlying most if not all of your landscape? And are there portions in an older world where there has been collapses of the surface creating deep chasms full of not very nice things.

Depending on your magic content, populations can be fed with much less agriculture than in our own middle ages. There also would be a lot less disease and famine where there are divine magics to counter such maladys. This makes nice strong populations centers which you need because if there is strong evil out in the world then these are heavily fortified and magically protected so don't expect to have many outlying structures beyond a cities walls except where they can maintain their own defenses. There may not be roads connecting cities together, unless they can be adaquately protected in tracts of wilderness. Sea travel and commerce is even more viable because a ship can take its defenses with it in the form of strong magical barriers and wards, much more so than a man on horseback can. Beyond that there are many magical means of transporting goods and trades between cities. So your civilized areas may well be quite isolated, distant points on the map...unlike in our middle ages where population centers just grew outwards from initial settlements eventually ruralizing and connecting to one another. -In a fantasy world there are forces at play that prevent growth and expansion, territories of ravaging beasts, dragons, evil critters who live off of human and other races flesh. Things that would demolish and devour a full legion of well trained and equipped roman centurions, so conventional historical warfare as we know it may not even have developed in parallel to our history...those were fine to fight other countries and conquer many lands in our own history they were designed to fight people - it goes to pot quickly when an army of undead arises flanked by werewolves who can outdistance and take down your cavalry and lead by dragonmounted liches who can cut through a huge swath of the hardiest soldiers with a simple spell and then raise them up again to fight in their horde.

All of these things and more can have a bearing on what your landscape looks like. How has magic been used to alter the natural evolution of the geography? Where are the no-mans-lands, controlled by things that shouldn't be named? Where have druids been at work creating trees of enormous size and which forests and rivers are warded by dryads and sprites? Which mountains do dwarves call home and what have they done to them to say "keep out!" to any wouldbe tresspassers? Where have mages been working with earth elementals to build great barrier walls and rise up towering pinnacles of hardest stone to erect their sanctums on?

[Ascension]

Making sense is the main focus of my world and culture building - from the ground up. I don't put swamps in cold latitudes because that doesn't make sense to me; I don't put frogmen in deserts because that doesn't make sense either, in an evolutionary way. Explaining dungeons and mystical shrines can be as easy as saying some long forgotten and dead culture or race made them. That dead culture, if they lived in a cold area, would never have seen palm trees so I make sure that there are no palm trees in their art...I use wolves and bears and maples and firs. If all of the bits don't fit together then the whole world is just laughable to me. Just a few minutes of thought and reason can usually iron out those sorts of things, though. So, yes, I put a lot of thought into the things I do and not just put things together willy-nilly.

[curufea]

There's a few very interesting online tools dealing with fantasy demography for purposes of roleplaying (e.g. http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ ). These could be cross referenced to medieval (because these days fantasy is synonymous to medieval for some reason) demographic or infrastructure works.

Worldbuilding is a really good term to use when searching for these online as well.

[Xyll]

It is your world and you can choose whatever direction logical or illogical that you wish. Much like many published worlds and adventures often make no sense with the ecosystem. How many sentient beings can truly develop and live that close together. I digress

Personally I prefer to start with a small area and expand outwards as that way you do not feel stuck by your own work. I generally have a good idea where I want people but as to ruins and lost places they should stay that until you decide It needs to be where the PC's are at. Nothing is more frustrating to me then choosing a place and then being stuck with my results later.

The problem with being stuck on the macro it is not significant to the game. The players only care about what is in front of them. Some my find the history and background cool but it is more an exercise for you to enjoy your world more not them .

Players exist and play in the micro. They only care about your world as far as it effects their character. They don't care why the creatures are placed that way they just care if they are going to interfer in their plans and adventure.

If you are really lucky you will have players that will build a background and a good history for their character which helps give the world more life for them in my opinion.

Just my opinion take it or leave it

[Ascension]

Good points Xyll. I tend to think of writing and forget gaming so for gaming your points are quite spot-on.

[bblackmoor]

There's a few very interesting online tools dealing with fantasy demography for purposes of roleplaying (e.g. http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ ).

I love when I stumble across links to my site.

That being said, I honestly don't worry too much about realism, myself. I mean, I stick with the obvious things -- mountains are usually on the edges or between continents, land masses and forests rarely have straight edges, rivers go downhill and tend to combine rather than diverge, cities tend to be on coasts, in bays, at intersections of rivers, and so on -- but when it gets down to the minutiae of what's "realistic" and what's not, I really just don't worry about it too much.

For example, in my current fantasy game, the world is much older than the civilizations currently in it. This is even part of the mythology. So there are ancient temples, ruined cities, and whatnot in places where there is no rational reason for them to be.

Also, the centers of non-monster population (cities, towns, etc.) tend to be much farther apart than in our world. I make a faint attempt to rationalize this by saying that the world is, in general, harsher and less fertile than our world (this, too, is part of the mythology). But really, I just wanted lots of wilderness to explore, and I wanted overland travel between to be difficult. I want cities to feel isolated. So they are.

The thing is to keep your priorities in order. Why are you putting this effort into making maps and writing up countries and histories and so on? If it's to provide backstory for a game, then as along as it serves that purpose, it really doesn't matter if anyone else thinks it's "realistic". If it's for your own entertainment, then put as much or as little effort into it as you enjoy. There aren't any "fantasy police" who will fine you if your cities are too large or your rivers are going the wrong way.

That being said, if you enjoy making the world believable, then by all means, put effort into that. But keep things in perspective.

That's my two cents, anyway.

[AlohaRover]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

I guess I just want some bit of backstory so that the micro events make some sort of sense.

i guess its the concept of great evil that I need to keep in mind. I need to STOP thinking about real world events.

My current thought is-
Every 500-1000 years someone attempts to take over the entire world and the battles are so huge that vast areas are wiped out or in their rise to power they go just a little too far in their magic and blow everything up (think nuclear winter or meteor impact type of event) so years of no sun almost every thing dies. Small pockets of the different races start to make a come back and spread.
Someone rediscovers an old power and the cycle repeats.

[Juggernaut1981]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

I guess I just want some bit of backstory so that the micro events make some sort of sense.

i guess its the concept of great evil that I need to keep in mind. I need to STOP thinking about real world events.

My current thought is-
Every 500-1000 years someone attempts to take over the entire world and the battles are so huge that vast areas are wiped out or in their rise to power they go just a little too far in their magic and blow everything up (think nuclear winter or meteor impact type of event) so years of no sun almost every thing dies. Small pockets of the different races start to make a come back and spread.
Someone rediscovers an old power and the cycle repeats.

Planetary reset...
Good aspects: allows societies to wipe each other off and explain lots of nice ruins, etc.
Bad aspects: It took nearly 1,000 years to get from the Iron Age to the Medieval period. "Nuclear Winter" = pre bronze age. You will reset society back to nomads.
Conclusion: 1,000 years is too short a cycle. A 2,500 year cycle may work better (even accounting for magic).

Sentient Beings
Have as many sentient beings as you need, the Gods are creative suckers.

Common Causes for Empires Dying
There are generally 3 main causes for the end of an empire
1. Another new empire with good Generals (see The Ottoman Empire, the War of the Roses, end of the Teutons, Egypt vs Alexander, etc)
2. Getting old, socially sick (think Romans) and slowly collapsing (100-200 year death)
3. Getting scrubbed out by an unforseen tragedy (disease wipes out whole cities crippling economies, major resources propping up the empire run out, droughts cripple the populace and consequently cash flows out of the empire to buy food)

[AlohaRover]

I think I was thinking too much.

I don't intend to map this ruin is here, this one there, castle of doom goes here.

But I do want the main population centers in place.
I have been playing around with the ZombiNirvana videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/ZombieNirvana

I want a small like ,1kx1k miles area, that will be the burnt edge, rough sketch map of major things that is known to the players. no super detailed, but the dwarves are here, elves here, dont go here.

In reading all the responses I like the idea of huge evil and huge good going back and forth. Settlements dont spread out like on earth because its so dangerous. My largest current empire is is maybe 3x600 miles, most are 100 mile circles/blobs.