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Thread: Grainstreet, a small village map.

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  1. #1

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    When I draw village maps, I usually do them with just the bigger fields being hinted at or out of view. It's not really something you need to worry too much about, in my opinion.
    My new Deviant-thing. I finally caved.

  2. #2

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    If you want to learn about the actual structure of a medieval village, a good resource is Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. I can summarize some of the main points I got out of reading it.

    With it being said that "fantasy village" ≠ "medieval village", if you're going for historical accuracy then most "village" maps get the details wrong. One surprising thing is that medieval houses actually had fairly sizable yards. It makes more sense when you think about it, for a couple of reason. First of all, villages are not just small versions of towns, they're actually rural areas where space tends to be less of a limiting factor. As a result the houses will usually be spaced out more and will have a fenced in yard. The yard is not just for leisure like a modern yard, it actually serves a functional purpose to house livestock such as chickens, or maybe the owner's only cow when it's not out in the pasture, or maybe a pig, etc. They were also used for vegetable gardens, separate from the crops grown out in the actual fields. The yards actually were not small either. I'm going from memory but I think it was suggested that the average yard was between 1/4 acre and 1/2 acre (it may have actually been the larger end of that range).

    Then in terms of the fields, the fields were not attached to each house like would be the case with say a modern farm or ranch. Communal fields would be all around the village, but they would be divided into strips owned by each family. These strips would not be contiguous with one another but would be spread all around. Daia Maps provided a good link to read more about that, so I won't go into any more detail here.

    Then the social structure of the village... well, let's just say that it's not anything like what is presented in fantasy fiction, arguably for good reason because it is so different from modern society that it would be nearly unintelligible to the modern reader and would require a great deal of explanation. Basically it doesn't make sense to delve that deeply into that unless you're writing historical fiction or the social structure of the village serves a pivotal role in your story.

    With your current map, I would say the current "fields" in the map could realistically be each house's yard (just put a fence around them). Just add some fields in the outskirts and you're good. Arguably the woods directly around the village would have been entirely cut down, unless the ground there was bad for farming. But like I said, medieval village is not really the smae thing as fantasy village, so if you want to take some creative license that's fine. Just if you want full historical accuracy probably you should have fields in the areas where there is currently woods.

  3. #3

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    Oh, one other thing, historically 20 acres was considered to be required to comfortably feed a family, so it actually required a huge amount of acreage to feed the population. This is another area where fantasy deviates quite significantly from reality. Historically, in medieval times Europe had a population of ~70 million people (it depends on the year) but 95% of them lived in hamlets or villages of 50-200 people. Basically, most of the population was focused on growing food, and that was by far the dominant profession and the dominant use of land. In fantasy settings, the amount of land devoted to farming tends to be dramatically below what would have been required in actuality.

    However, the fantasy genre, whether RPGs or stories, can be seen more as modern life re-imagined as being with lesser technology and (usually) magic, etc. Actual historical accuracy is quite poor, but it's also not really expected for the genre. So if you're going for a fantasy village I'd say your current map is already fine as is. Let me also add that artistically/aesthetically I think you've done an impressive job.

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