Credible Size of a Setting?

[othersong]

I've been a lurker for ages, but this is the first time I post.

I've been working on a setting for a while. I'm quite familiar with Phtotoshop, but I've never used it to make a map. I hope I'll learn as soon as I start the actual work. Anyway, I digress.

I was wondering how big a fantasy world should be? I know this is a hard question to answer, but I'd like your input nontheless.

I'll throw some of my setting's key points at y'all and see what you return.

This is a fantasy setting. With regards to technology, we're talking standard fantasy. G. R. R. Martin's world is a good comparison with regards to tech (a mix of alchemy/magic, viking, medieval, and rennaissance). Travel is predominantly done via horse or ships. Although certain adventurers and their like can claim to have seen most parts of the known world, few commoners ever travel far from home. The exception to this rule is merchants, of course, who often travel between several big city-states (although rarely all of 'em).

The world is based on the premise of viking culture and aethestics somehow spreading throughout other represented cultures. That is to say: cultures in the world that resemble cultures from our world incorporate some viking beliefs, traditions, and aethestics.

The world doesn't have (m)any countries per se. Instead, settlements are organized into city-states - settlements (typically) consist of one larger city and its surrounding farms and villages. Typically, there's several days of travel from city-state to city-state (although this depends on how big the world ends up being - I'd like some input on this too, actually). When travelling from city-state to city-state, travellers typically rest at lodges made for the purpose, on castles, farms, and inns located along the highways, at outposts or travel posts, or the like. If you go by ship, you reduce travel time, naturally.

Now, I haven't decided how many landmasses my world consists of, but I know that I would like to include versions of the following historical cultures:
- Scandinavia.
- Russia.
- More medieaval Europe.
- More early-rennaissance/southern Europe (like King's Landing, I suppose).
- Some areas of Africa (predominantly the savannah, not so much egypt).
- Some areas of the Middle East/deserts (inspired by One Thousand and One Nights).
- More deserts, home to very few people (probably an extension of the African-inspired area).
- An arctic area (probably an extension of Russia/Scandinavia).
- India (although that is probably somewhat included in the above).
- Some areas of asia (predominantly China/Mongolia).
- A host of islands (some of which are uncharted) (here be viking pirates).

Any suggestions on how big I ought to make this world? Dunno how one would measure that actually... like, maybe compare it to an existing setting, to real-world continents, or whatever. Naturally, my African-inspired area doesn't need to be as big as real-world Africa. Niether do any of the others. I hope the size of the world will make sense in the end, however.

Thanks!

[Diamond]

To be honest, what this sounds like to me is a regional map, rather than a world map. A big region, but not enough meat to flesh out a whole world. I feel like if you have a culture and/or tech level approximating the early renaissance, there will be more than city-states.

Your overlying Viking-esque culture could easily come to be - just look at our world for an example: the Normans. Sure, they weren't really 'Vikings' after they settled in France and semi-assimilated, but you could tweak that for your setting and say that your Vikings maintained more of their culture, were a little fiercer and ruled most of the known world at one point. Probably not for more than a few decades, since I'm guessing you want the native traditions, aesthetics, etc, to still be there, but with a Viking overlay.

Ultimately, the size of your world is up to you, but I think you've got two conflicting ideas working at cross-purposes: lots of cultures that historically were more than city-states (and honestly wouldn't work as city-states), and wanting a world populated by city-states. Now you could have an area (and feasibly a rather large one) made up of city-states: it could be a region that collapsed into anarchy after the 'Viking Empire' broke up, and is now reforming as small states - baronies, duchies, little pocket republics and city-states, etc. I just don't think it makes sense to have an entire world that looks like that.

[Gamerprinter]

Well it depends on whether you are approaching your setting from a top down perspective or a bottom up perspective (I usually work with the latter). Creating an entire world from a top down perspective means you are creating everything all at once, however trying to achieve cultural details for every location is an impossibly huge job, one that you may never finish depending on how much "complete" detail you want in every region, every city, every culture. Going bottom up means you start in one city, or region, describe it in as much detail as you require, then expand into other regions or cities as you need, as the storyline expands. Considering the Song of Ice and Fire for example, most of the early books focus on the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Although other places are mentioned not much detail goes there, until you reach the further books where travel to those other places become part of the story line. In this way Martin's work is bottom up, not top down.

I have an ongoing published setting called the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) which was designed bottom up, but will never include the rest of the world, being essentially a setting of a feudal Japan analog only. Visitors from other places do occur, but I am not concerned with the rest of the world, in that Kaidan is intended to be inserted into anyone's existing home brew world or published world fantasy setting that might not have a good representation of a Japan analog. The initial adventure modules concerned only one of the four largest islands of an archipelago of thousands of islands. I am near completion of a Gamemaster's Guide to Kaidan that touches upon every major island, major cities, with a map showing all communities and geographic regions, and other specific cultural details. Consider however, that I began development and releasing Kaidan products back in 2010, and only now am about to release the setting guide - thus six years in the making. 13 products have been released including 3 full adventure modules, 4 one-shot modules, 3 racial guides, 2 class/faction guides, a haunts guide and this was all long before the full setting guide became a thing. If I started this project top down, I still wouldn't be complete and probably have years of work to go before it was ready, which seemed counterintuitive from a commercial point of view.

You may not be intending to publish, still the work is the same even for a home brew that only players at your table will ever touch. Is the setting worth while enough to wait years until completion, or can they start in one part of the world which is largely fully developed, and when adventures travel to other places, only then would you expand your world beyond the starting point of play? You can have merchants from XYX location outside of the adventuring home base to give hints to the rest of the world with only a modicum of development. At the point that traveling across the world to the next location becomes an issue, it is only then that a more fully developed next location should require work to complete. This way your world is built over time, as needed, without worrying about your analog Africa, until there is a reason to go there and a reason to exist.

There's the other possibility that you develop say an analog Viet Nam, with lots of cultural and geographic detail, except your players never go there, so it essentially meets your completeness world design goal, yet be a complete waste of time, as your players will never see it. Why create a whole world, where your players will only visit 10% of it. This is a common occurrence in top down develoment.

[Korash]

Othersong, It sounds to me like what you had before the viking culture exploded was as diamond said, a bunch of geological locations that had peoples of certain cultures, but not nessairily nations. I think maybe a few large city states that wre bordering on being nation in their own right (simular to ancient greece) but I have to disagree about the renaicance implies Nationhood....Italy at that period of time was mostly city states within a common culture. having a few générations of strong leaders in the nordic cultures could unite that culture, and then have them explode out and conquore the known world for another few générations. After that time I can easily see that empire colapse after the death of the last strong leader as others come to compete for the vacant throne...think the colapse of rome...The colapsing empire leaves behind the "taste" of the vikings, but in the chaos resorts back to the basic cultural grouping of cities vs cities....this implies in my mind that the colapse was not too many générations ago...

As for size, I also think that you are talking about a region, and not the entire world....Very few real world empires actually reached world wide status. Try to think along the lines of how far someone would be willing to travel by boat, and what THIER capacity tech Wise to navigate open water. If theywere capable, thier reach would be MUCH larger than having to hug coasts.

[LordEntrails]

I think everyone makes good points for you to to consider. I will add a comment to this statement/thought;

As for size, I also think that you are talking about a region, and not the entire world....Very few real world empires actually reached world wide status. Try to think along the lines of how far someone would be willing to travel by boat, and what THIER capacity tech Wise to navigate open water. If theywere capable, thier reach would be MUCH larger than having to hug coasts.

The only exception to using the historical reference is magic. With human history and technology, no society or even adventurer has ever been everywhere. And "the known world" is always just a tiny fraction of the actual global world. But, if your world has teleportation magic, and especially if it is common, then you might actually have global spanning civilizations.