Valenca- small rpg village

[Aelyn]

Aloha!

So I was just offered a little village in an RPG to rule myself, and of course my first act as Sovereign will be a map But a simple question is in my way: How many buildings? Usually I just draw as many as I see fit, but this time I know the village has roughly 400 inhabitants. Some if not most will be peasants, but there are also some craftsmen, two shrines, a creek and probably one or two wealthier households (traders or something).

What's your guess- how many buildings should I draw? How many people live in a peasant's or craftsman's house?

[Clercon]

I would guess around 50 houses.

[Ascension]

Is that just adults or total population?

[Aelyn]

Not quite sure, but I guess it's total population. It may not be exactly 400 but maybe 380 oder 450, I cannot know for sure. The only source I have says it's "a village of roughly 400 peasants". Maybe I just divide 400 by 6 or something like it, should equal about 60 homes or so. Seems quite realistic to me considering that peasant households might be bigger while craftsmen might only live together with their wive or so.

[AlexTna]

Somewhere between 70-100, more towards 70 is my guess.

[arsheesh]

Well here's the thing, a while back I was planning on doing a town map and was trying to gather information on roughly what the buildings to population ratio would have been for the medieval period. Mind you, I didn't spend hours in the library researching academic sources (though, oddly, my inquiries did lead me to read portions of an old dissertation from the 50's), but in the few hours that I did devote to this research the best resource that I could come up with was the A Magical Medieval City Guide. This guide suggests that this ratio is approximately 1:2 (1 building per two adults). So if those figures are right (and I have no idea if they are or not), then you'd be looking at 100-200 buildings, depending on whether or not that 400 estimate includes the entire populace or merely its adults.

As an aside, I highly recommend this supplement. There is also a pretty nifty online City Generator that CyrstalBallSoft designed based on this supplement. Hope that helps.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Larb]

Usually (and when building my world anyway), I stick to an average figure of a family of five per residence (mom, dad, 2-3 children, and maybe a grandparent or other relative living there). It seems reasonable and falls fairly inline with the numbers that come out of the domesday book. And I can easily slide it up and down for differing cultural attitudes to communal living or other regional differences.

[Djekspek]

also depends on culture and technical advancement... there are plenty of cultures that had villages with 3-4 big houses that each kept up to 50 people (a couple of complete families)

[MSZ]

I agree to that what Djekspek said.
Also you have think about the other aspects. The stage of your culture - for example in medievel times you had a population distribution in form of a pyramid - very less old people many young..