# Area of a medieval town?



## NewJeffCT

About how big would a medieval town of 1,000 be, in terms of square miles/acres/km?

This is the number of people living inside the town walls, not the people living in surrounding hamlets, farmsteads, etc.

I was trying to judge how long the town walls would be, assuming a square - 1,000 feet each, 1/3 of a mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile?

Thanks


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## CharlesRyan

Not big, if you're talking about a pretty realistic medieval town. A market square (50 to 100 yards on a side, not necessarily square in shape) and a couple irregular blocks in each direction.

A couple points of reference from here in the UK: The two historical market towns nearest us both have populations of around 20,000, and neither is more than a mile across now. Obviously, they would have been much smaller when they had populations in the 1,000 range (which they probably did in medieval times).

And the walled towns I've visited, which would have had populations well over 1,000, are not more than half a mile on a side.

Worth noting: In larger, bustling walled towns, where space was a constraint, the buildings might be very dense. But in more common small market towns, the buildings probably have sizeable crofts and might only be dense right around the marketplace.

Hope that helps!


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## NewJeffCT

CharlesRyan said:


> Not big, if you're talking about a pretty realistic medieval town. A market square (50 to 100 yards on a side, not necessarily square in shape) and a couple irregular blocks in each direction.
> 
> A couple points of reference from here in the UK: The two historical market towns nearest us both have populations of around 20,000, and neither is more than a mile across now. Obviously, they would have been much smaller when they had populations in the 1,000 range (which they probably did in medieval times).
> 
> And the walled towns I've visited, which would have had populations well over 1,000, are not more than half a mile on a side.
> 
> Worth noting: In larger, bustling walled towns, where space was a constraint, the buildings might be very dense. But in more common small market towns, the buildings probably have sizeable crofts and might only be dense right around the marketplace.
> 
> Hope that helps!




Thanks - that was helpful.  So, I wouldn't be out of line to say the town is surrounded by a wooden palisade that is maybe 125 yards on each side?


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## CharlesRyan

That might be a little tight, if there's a market (and in real medieval towns, the market was the raison d'etre)--maybe 200 - 300 yards on a side would be more "realistic." But not too far out of line if the main function of the town is huddling behind the defenses of the palisade.


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## S'mon

A good rule of thumb for medieval cities is 1 square mile per 50,000; medieval City of London - 'the square mile' - being the model.  But 1,000 is too small for full urbanisation; these kinds of market towns typically had lines of terraced houses along the roads, with open areas behind, and would not normally be seriously walled.  

200 yards on a side if roughly square sounds reasonable, but it would be more common for them to be drawn out along trade roads, eg I lived in Swavesey in Cambridgeshire which fits this model (a village now, it was a medieval market town).


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## Wombat

While this is not for D&D per se, you can find some great ideas on points like this over at ...

Lýthia.com

Since Harn is more or less built around the notion of a low-magic, fairly straightforward medieval world, the core and fan-created material provides great insight into all sorts of small points this way.    Just check out some of the maps to get an idea.


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## NewJeffCT

S'mon said:


> A good rule of thumb for medieval cities is 1 square mile per 50,000; medieval City of London - 'the square mile' - being the model.  But 1,000 is too small for full urbanisation; these kinds of market towns typically had lines of terraced houses along the roads, with open areas behind, and would not normally be seriously walled.
> 
> 200 yards on a side if roughly square sounds reasonable, but it would be more common for them to be drawn out along trade roads, eg I lived in Swavesey in Cambridgeshire which fits this model (a village now, it was a medieval market town).




Thanks - the town is on the eastern edge of a range of hills & small mountains and sits at the edge of a pass through the hills.  So, it is on the trade route through the hills and onto a larger city on the other side.


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## Treebore

What? Where is the links to those awesome websites that tell you all kind sof things abut towns, their sizes, etc...?

Yeah, HARN material is an awesome resource, adn the stuff the people do for free at lythia is just jaw droppingly good.


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## Ashtagon

A typical unwalled market town would be Watford, Hertfordshire. It consisted essentially of a crossroads, and another half-dozen side-streets. The main core "business district" was a single road about half a mile long. There was a church to one side, and the market would be held in an adjacent field. The surrounding countryside was farmland.

Walled towns would actually be fairly unusual unless the town was also a centre of government.


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## Hejdun

This site:

Medieval Demographics Made Easy

Says that population density for towns and cities is about 61/acre.  So 1,000 would correspond to about 16.5 acres.  Of course a lot of people can't visualize how big an acre is, but it's slightly smaller than an American football field without the endzones.  An acre is also a square with 208 feet to a side.  Or perhaps it helps to envision 1/640th of a mile 

Basically, each person has their own 25 foot square.  Which actually sounds unnaturally high, but I suppose the larger estates of the more affluent bring the average up quite a bit.


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## Henrix

One thing I'd like to point out (again) is that basically everything in a medieval town or village is measured in walking distance - you don't just hop into your car to go to the grocery store or neighbour, and, in particular, not to the well!

So compared to modern urban areas everything is generally clustered together.

I'd like to see this on more fantasy maps, and fewer maps showing something like american suburbs.

This is what a medieaval village does not look like: Diamond Lake (from Paizo/Dungeon AP Age of Worms - good adventures, bad map).
Lots of roads that serve no purpose except to increase the distance between the buildings.


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## haakon1

NewJeffCT said:


> About how big would a medieval town of 1,000 be, in terms of square miles/acres/km?
> 
> This is the number of people living inside the town walls, not the people living in surrounding hamlets, farmsteads, etc.
> 
> I was trying to judge how long the town walls would be, assuming a square - 1,000 feet each, 1/3 of a mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile?
> 
> Thanks




Well, the City of London is colloquially known as "the Square Mile".  London, however, was one of the largest cities in medieval western Europe, with I think up to 15,000 people at its peak.

I believe Paris (excluding suburbs) was just the Ile de la Cite, which is probably smaller than a square mile.  It had about the same population.

So, 1000 person city, minus fields and suburbs, would be pretty small.  A Square Mile is 5280 ft x 5280 ft. or 640 acres . . . scale downwards as seems reasonable to you.


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## Treebore

Henrix said:


> This is what a medieaval village does not look like: Diamond Lake (from Paizo/Dungeon AP Age of Worms - good adventures, bad map).
> Lots of roads that serve no purpose except to increase the distance between the buildings.




I don't know about that, I like to think of Diamond Lake as a community smart enough to take into account the effects of fireballs. Like in a PC party, distance is your friend.

I think our real world towns and cities would be laid out very differently if they had to take into account one fireball being capable of burning down the whole place, if the buildings are kept packed together. Such cities would be just one big pile of wood needing to be burned.

So I think Diamond Lake actually takes the reality of fireballs, and certain other spells, into account.


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## Henrix

haakon1 said:


> Well, the City of London is colloquially known as "the Square Mile".  London, however, was one of the largest cities in medieval western Europe, with I think up to 15,000 people at its peak.




Well, it was up to near 100,000 just before the plagues. And about the same for Paris.


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## S'mon

haakon1 said:


> Well, the City of London is colloquially known as "the Square Mile".  London, however, was one of the largest cities in medieval western Europe, with I think up to 15,000 people at its peak.




Peak?  When did London peak?  Last time London peaked was when the Romans left!  

I used 50,000 because I've seen that as a high-medieval estimate for London's population, but it reached around 100,000 by the end of the middle ages ca 1500, as I recall.  And I'm sure Paris was larger.


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## S'mon

Treebore said:


> I don't know about that, I like to think of Diamond Lake as a community smart enough to take into account the effects of fireballs. Like in a PC party, distance is your friend.
> 
> I think our real world towns and cities would be laid out very differently if they had to take into account one fireball being capable of burning down the whole place, if the buildings are kept packed together. Such cities would be just one big pile of wood needing to be burned.
> 
> So I think Diamond Lake actually takes the reality of fireballs, and certain other spells, into account.




Fireballs would have to be more common than the hazards that regularly did burn down real medieval and post-medieval cities.  Cities were extremely vulnerable to fire, but for practical reasons they remained closely packed.  

This is particularly true for walled towns, the standard sort in D&D - defensive walls are very expensive and the land within would be very very closely packed.  It's possible that a world with ubiquitous fireballs might not have walled towns, though - assuming wandering orcs aren't a more likely threat.

Villages tended to either cluster around a village green or spread out along a road.


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## NewJeffCT

Thanks - the town is walled for defensive purposes.  There are marauding gnolls that raid the towns, so some sort of defense is needed.


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## Treebore

S'mon said:


> Fireballs would have to be more common than the hazards that regularly did burn down real medieval and post-medieval cities.  Cities were extremely vulnerable to fire, but for practical reasons they remained closely packed.
> 
> This is particularly true for walled towns, the standard sort in D&D - defensive walls are very expensive and the land within would be very very closely packed.  It's possible that a world with ubiquitous fireballs might not have walled towns, though - assuming wandering orcs aren't a more likely threat.
> 
> Villages tended to either cluster around a village green or spread out along a road.





I agree, but lets take Waterdeep or the Free City of Greyhawk as examples. Unless you have resources, a single fireball, with its 40 foot diameter of effect, can turn whole buildings to ash and set a lot of adjoining buildings on fire all at once. So I think it would be "realistic" to presume that for similar defensive reasons, not to mention random fire breathing dragons, and other fire breathing creatures, it would actually change the town building presumptions of a fantasy world like Greyhawk or Faerun. Unless they have plenty of spellcasters powerful enough to quickly counter such started fires.

So it may take more time and resources to build bigger and longer walls, but it takes even more time and resources to rebuild the towns and replace the lost lives. Now granted, if you live in a society where the rich and powerful care more about their gold than they do their people they won't care how often people are killed and buildings need to be rebuilt.


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## S'mon

Treebore, let's agree to disagree.


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## CharlesRyan

Fire is a can of worms you might not really want to open, or you'll be moving into a whole new universe of urban design that might not end up with your cities and towns looking anything like you imagined.

In real medieval times, fire was a very serious threat to urban life. The word "curfew" comes from the French for "cover fire," because it was literally against the law in most cities to have an open flame after a certain time of night (generally Compline, or around 9:00). Even so, most medieval cities suffered one or more catastrophic fires over their histories. (Or even into more modern times, up to the point of electric lights, plumbing (and fire hydrants), and the concept of the building code--witness Chicago.)

If fireballs and dragons are so common in your world that they substantially increase the already serious threat of fire, I wouldn't use the medieval world as any sort of standard for how towns and cities look in your world. On the flip side, if you like a bit more grit and realism, the fact that your cities will be pitch black after curfew adds a new dimension to urban adventures. . . .


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## S'mon

NewJeffCT said:


> Thanks - the town is walled for defensive purposes.  There are marauding gnolls that raid the towns, so some sort of defense is needed.




Probably a palisade; since gnolls aren't much into siege works a stone wall would probably be overkill.

IRL, the likelihood of raiders has prompted a variety of responses.

In the Scottish Borders there were a small number of well defended walled towns, but most poor people seem to have been semi-nomadic herders of cattle, which can be moved easily away from invaders.   Scotland is also littered with fortified manor houses, which are basically towers (tall, narrow) which local minor nobles could defend against rivals and raiders.

In modern Afghanistan we see on the news from Helmand that the standard approach is fortified single-family dwellings, which can accommodate a couple dozen people and be defended against small raiding bands.  This was also common in the medieval Scottish highlands and Scandinavia.


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## NewJeffCT

S'mon said:


> Probably a palisade; since gnolls aren't much into siege works a stone wall would probably be overkill.
> 
> IRL, the likelihood of raiders has prompted a variety of responses.




Thanks - I had envisioned a palisade type of wall around the town.


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## Mournblade94

S'mon said:


> Fireballs would have to be more common than the hazards that regularly did burn down real medieval and post-medieval cities. Cities were extremely vulnerable to fire, but for practical reasons they remained closely packed.
> 
> This is particularly true for walled towns, the standard sort in D&D - defensive walls are very expensive and the land within would be very very closely packed. It's possible that a world with ubiquitous fireballs might not have walled towns, though - assuming wandering orcs aren't a more likely threat.
> 
> Villages tended to either cluster around a village green or spread out along a road.




Being a simulationist, and someone that studies history in depth, I used to ponder this all the time.  In fact, I was at one point ready to get rid of a fantasy Icon... the castle because magic made castles even more obsolete than did the bombard.  With flying creatures and spells there was no purpose to walls or moats.  One Rock to mud spell was more valuable than any trebuchet.

Simply I STOPPED pondering these things.  I still have tons of castles, even though air attacks are possible.  My campaign is still a western medieval world even though magic would render it obsolete.  I found it was no longer fun to make things technical.  At that moment I was even able to watch star trek again without complaining about impossible molecular biology.  

I research history, and I am a scientist by profession.  I frequently have to leave those disciplines behind just so I can enjoy the game without worrying about technicalities.

Still it is very hard for simulationists to do that.


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## gizmo33

Mournblade94 said:


> Simply I STOPPED pondering these things. I still have tons of castles, even though air attacks are possible. My campaign is still a western medieval world even though magic would render it obsolete.




But logically, magic could also render it feasible.  

IMO DnD simply suffers from a lack of development of counter-measures for these things.  There's fireball, but inexplicably no "waterball".  Wands of waterball would make a city of wood and thatch a more comfortable place.  I see no reason that there aren't types of stone, or spells, that can render a castle immune to rock to mud.  If I can cast "protection from fire" on a flammable PC, why not "protection from mud" on a castle wall? 

People in history developed counter-measures to threats.  I think it's reasonable to assume that the fantasy world works the way it does because people developed materials, spells, etc. that make it feasible.  DnD has largely developed from a player-centric perspective, and the unlikelihood that a PC would be interested in a waterball spell probably drove most of the inbalance that simulationists see in the rules.

A moat would be useful against 10,000 land-based creatures, so a few flying creatures might not render a castle obsolete.  A few long-ranged ballistas and making sure you have some roof cover for towers and parapets (which would be historical anyway IIRC) might help against the flying.  Swarms of keen-sighted flying pirana might help too (and not so much a threat against the legion of 10,000).

AFAICT 4e helps by decreasing the availability of flying and invisibility, but I think these strategies, combined with a "don't think about it so much" philosophy might help.


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## smetzger

I think fire would be less likely in a D&D city, with the cheap availability of magical light there would be less accidental fires.


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## AllisterH

re: Medieval towns with magic.

I think in 1e/2e you didn't really have to worry about the effect of magic on things like towns and castles due to the rarity concept.

If only 1 in a million people even knew the rock to mud spell, the odds are certainly low enough that you can discount the effect of that spell. Same thing goes for fireballs etc.

Which is why I think in 1e/2e the classic medieval town makes sense since spellcasters are rare to begin with and every level after first, the rarity drops in a hurry. (Anyone remember what the 1e DMG had as breakdowns for class and level in a typical 1e/2e world?)

Smetgzer raises the point that much of the source of fires in a typical medieval town are no longer needed (and this is certainly true in Eberron) but most of the 3e worlds didn't understand what the increased appearance of spells and spellcasters did for the world.


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## gizmo33

AllisterH said:


> I think in 1e/2e you didn't really have to worry about the effect of magic on things like towns and castles due to the rarity concept.
> 
> If only 1 in a million people even knew the rock to mud spell, the odds are certainly low enough that you can discount the effect of that spell. Same thing goes for fireballs etc.




I don't see how the rarity thing can work (other than the DM just saying it).  I think the accessibility of a resource isn't the only factor.  It's also it's influence.  

AFAICT all it would take is a few people with a spell that renders 10's of thousands of gold pieces worth of expenditure obsolete.  So if I'm a king, I'd rather spend 90,000 gp on a search for that one person in my kingdom who can cast rock to mud then deal with the overhead and time required in building and maintaining a castle.  And if I'm the one guy in the kingdom that can cast the spell, why not approach the king and say "hey, pay me the costs of 5 castles and I'll join your army".  

And this assumes that it's really only 1 in a million people that can cast rock to mud.  I think that value doesn't really match the demographics of what PCs actually encounter in the world (IMO - based on a "typical" adventure module).  9th level PCs aren't that rare in people's games, so why would 9th level NPCs be?  YMMV but my general experience is that a 9th level campaign doesn't consist of the PCs fighting zillions of low level NPCs.  So in a game where the PCs are constantly battling NPCs of sufficient power to cast transmute rock to mud, I think it's a little inconsistent to then argue that these NPCs aren't around when a war starts.

And even if the NPCs are rare - a 9th level PC wizard will suddenly find himself with tremendous power if castles aren't capable of counter-acting his powers.

It also doesn't take into account persons who have a magic item with this power, but can't cast it themselves.  Or the possibility of researching a lesser version that would be very useful but lower level (perhaps with less of an area of effect or other restrictions - like a single 10 ft cube).



AllisterH said:


> Which is why I think in 1e/2e the classic medieval town makes sense since spellcasters are rare to begin with and every level after first, the rarity drops in a hurry. (Anyone remember what the 1e DMG had as breakdowns for class and level in a typical 1e/2e world?)




I only remember a later 2e supplement (about how level adventurers, I think) having anything about demographics.  IIRC 3e was the first DnD to have demographic guidelines that were somewhat official (or at least in the core rules)



AllisterH said:


> Smetgzer raises the point that much of the source of fires in a typical medieval town are no longer needed (and this is certainly true in Eberron) but most of the 3e worlds didn't understand what the increased appearance of spells and spellcasters did for the world.




There's cooking, warmth, industry (blacksmithing etc.), branding, and a zillion other uses for fire besides light.  People in the city are probably burning magical candles for luck, or lit incense for their deities.  Or just pleasant light (like they do IRL)  And there's arson and fire-based monsters.  "Not as" dangerous as IRL doesn't immediately mean to me that fire isn't still a basic issue in fantasy cities.  Again, severity would be as much of a consideration as frequency.  One summoned salamander, no matter how infrequent, would be a problem if he could run around and destroy the whole city.

An army big enough to take over a city was probably pretty rare, but it didn't stop people from building walls around it.  IME people worry about rare stuff.


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## NewJeffCT

AllisterH said:


> re: Medieval towns with magic.
> 
> I think in 1e/2e you didn't really have to worry about the effect of magic on things like towns and castles due to the rarity concept.
> 
> If only 1 in a million people even knew the rock to mud spell, the odds are certainly low enough that you can discount the effect of that spell. Same thing goes for fireballs etc.
> 
> Which is why I think in 1e/2e the classic medieval town makes sense since spellcasters are rare to begin with and every level after first, the rarity drops in a hurry. (Anyone remember what the 1e DMG had as breakdowns for class and level in a typical 1e/2e world?)
> 
> Smetgzer raises the point that much of the source of fires in a typical medieval town are no longer needed (and this is certainly true in Eberron) but most of the 3e worlds didn't understand what the increased appearance of spells and spellcasters did for the world.




why are spellcasters more common in 3E?  I've actually found the opposite.

If anything, I have seen parties with fewer of them since the advent of 3E.  Back in 2E days, most of my old gaming group was some sort of multi-classed caster - fighter/mage; mage/cleric; mage/thief; cleric; specialist mage 1; specialist mage 2; then we had ranger, thief and fighter to round out the group, and the ranger could also cast some minor spells, too.   Only 3 humans in the group as well.  At least with 3E, there are reasons to play humans and/or non casters.

I think spellcasters are as common or rare as the DM wants them to be.


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## NewJeffCT

gizmo33 said:


> But logically, magic could also render it feasible.
> 
> IMO DnD simply suffers from a lack of development of counter-measures for these things.  There's fireball, but inexplicably no "waterball".  Wands of waterball would make a city of wood and thatch a more comfortable place.  I see no reason that there aren't types of stone, or spells, that can render a castle immune to rock to mud.  If I can cast "protection from fire" on a flammable PC, why not "protection from mud" on a castle wall?
> 
> People in history developed counter-measures to threats.  I think it's reasonable to assume that the fantasy world works the way it does because people developed materials, spells, etc. that make it feasible.  DnD has largely developed from a player-centric perspective, and the unlikelihood that a PC would be interested in a waterball spell probably drove most of the inbalance that simulationists see in the rules.
> 
> A moat would be useful against 10,000 land-based creatures, so a few flying creatures might not render a castle obsolete.  A few long-ranged ballistas and making sure you have some roof cover for towers and parapets (which would be historical anyway IIRC) might help against the flying.  Swarms of keen-sighted flying pirana might help too (and not so much a threat against the legion of 10,000).
> 
> AFAICT 4e helps by decreasing the availability of flying and invisibility, but I think these strategies, combined with a "don't think about it so much" philosophy might help.




agreed with that - why would anybody sail in a wooden boat if one pirate mage could torch your boat with a fireball from 600 feet away?  However, if a cheap alchemical substance was available to counteract a fireball type spell, then maybe a fireball isn't so useful there.  (There is an item called "smotherblend" in the Goods & Gear book from Kenzer that does that...)


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## Mournblade94

gizmo33 said:


> But logically, magic could also render it feasible.
> 
> IMO DnD simply suffers from a lack of development of counter-measures for these things. There's fireball, but inexplicably no "waterball". Wands of waterball would make a city of wood and thatch a more comfortable place. I see no reason that there aren't types of stone, or spells, that can render a castle immune to rock to mud. If I can cast "protection from fire" on a flammable PC, why not "protection from mud" on a castle wall?
> 
> People in history developed counter-measures to threats. I think it's reasonable to assume that the fantasy world works the way it does because people developed materials, spells, etc. that make it feasible. DnD has largely developed from a player-centric perspective, and the unlikelihood that a PC would be interested in a waterball spell probably drove most of the inbalance that simulationists see in the rules.
> 
> A moat would be useful against 10,000 land-based creatures, so a few flying creatures might not render a castle obsolete. A few long-ranged ballistas and making sure you have some roof cover for towers and parapets (which would be historical anyway IIRC) might help against the flying. Swarms of keen-sighted flying pirana might help too (and not so much a threat against the legion of 10,000).
> 
> AFAICT 4e helps by decreasing the availability of flying and invisibility, but I think these strategies, combined with a "don't think about it so much" philosophy might help.




I am in agreement here.  I did explore the magicpseudohistorical arms race, and that is actually when I stopped  It became a case of "where do you draw the line".

With that said I DO have enchantments for castle walls to make them immune to rock to mud.


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## Keith Robinson

Hey, there's some good stuff here.  Thanks 

Firstly, I should say to the OP that I wouldn't worry too much about realism, as it is more about getting together a backdrop that suits the needs of your game and your players.  Most people don't really care about what the reality is so long as it feels real to them.

Having said that, reflecting on the real world is a great way to improve your skills when constructing urban centers.

Here are a few websites that might offer additional insight:

Medieval England - Medieval towns - a look at daily life in a medieval town, which is easy to read and offers a lot of insight without being overly detailed.

Medieval Towns - supplies some historical data (or lack of it!) of medieval towns and looks briefly at why towns were likely to emerge and what it might be like to live in one.

Medieval Life - Towns and Villages - just a fun look at what you might need if you were going to build a town in medieval times.  Just some things to think of when designing your own.

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-769-1/ahds/dissemination/pdf/vol06-07/6_202_239.pdf [PDF, 2.4 meg] - a very detailed look at medieval houses, which includes sketches.  Probably more info than you need, but still offers some interesting insights.

And here's a list of medieval jobs for commoners and experts from my own site, which might help fill some stuff out


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## gizmo33

Mournblade94 said:


> I am in agreement here. I did explore the magicpseudohistorical arms race, and that is actually when I stopped It became a case of "where do you draw the line".




I draw the line where it's sufficient for me to give the players some idea that there's a possible reason why castles exist in the world, for example. 

If you have both a "rock to mud" spell and an "anti-rock to mud" spell existing in the world, then I think it's easier to argue that somehow castles are a believable part of a fantasy world.  Players who know that taking down a castle is probably not as simple as walking up to it and hitting it with a single spell can believe, IMO, that castles are useful enough to justify their cost.  

All I need for my game is enough uncertaintly that player's don't see taking down a castle as some sort of freebie.   I also don't hesitate to inform the players that there are spells, rituals, and materials that counter-act various spell effects.  

Like every other aspect of world-building and DMing, I only feel the need to develop the particulars to the degree that the players want to investigate the situation (or as time and my own curiosity permits).


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## Treebore

Mournblade94 said:


> Being a simulationist, and someone that studies history in depth, I used to ponder this all the time.  In fact, I was at one point ready to get rid of a fantasy Icon... the castle because magic made castles even more obsolete than did the bombard.  With flying creatures and spells there was no purpose to walls or moats.  One Rock to mud spell was more valuable than any trebuchet.
> 
> Simply I STOPPED pondering these things.  I still have tons of castles, even though air attacks are possible.  My campaign is still a western medieval world even though magic would render it obsolete.  I found it was no longer fun to make things technical.  At that moment I was even able to watch star trek again without complaining about impossible molecular biology.
> 
> I research history, and I am a scientist by profession.  I frequently have to leave those disciplines behind just so I can enjoy the game without worrying about technicalities.
> 
> Still it is very hard for simulationists to do that.




I agree, I too am a "scientist" in that I have a BS in Psychology and Biology, and by virtue of being married to my wife, who has degrees in history, biology, and other degrees, I am by default somewhat of a historian myself. So it definitely would be easier to ignore the "realities" of magic in our fantasy worlds, however, like the other poster (gizmo) pointed out, that problem can be largely addressed by bringing more defensive spells into existence. Plus having some mundane tricks work, like sheets of lead, blood of gorgons in your wall cement, etc... will at least make well established and well funded towns and cities viably defendable against such assaults.

So I would like to dig out my old 1E and 2E books and find all the old defensive spells, and defensive tricks like the lead and gorgons blood, and make that a part of my campaign world again.


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## NewJeffCT

Treebore said:


> So I would like to dig out my old 1E and 2E books and find all the old defensive spells, and defensive tricks like the lead and gorgons blood, and make that a part of my campaign world again.




If you could find where that is, I'd love to know - I still have most of my 1E and 2E books somewhere... I could swear I remember that the blood/ichor of an umber hulk added to your walls would prevent somebody from teleporting through them - or something like that.


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## Treebore

NewJeffCT said:


> If you could find where that is, I'd love to know - I still have most of my 1E and 2E books somewhere... I could swear I remember that the blood/ichor of an umber hulk added to your walls would prevent somebody from teleporting through them - or something like that.





Well I haven't done any research yet, but I am pretty sure they are somewhat obscure sentences in the 1E DMG. Meaning they certainly weren't written in a section where it was clearly labelled as such.


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## AnthonyRoberson

Treebore said:


> Well I haven't done any research yet, but I am pretty sure they are somewhat obscure sentences in the 1E DMG. Meaning they certainly weren't written in a section where it was clearly labelled as such.




It was Gorgon blood IIRC.  But there is a cheaper method - vines.  I don't believe you could teleport through living things, including plants...


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## Aloïsius

The first new fortified urbanisation during western europe middle age happened in southern France, and took the form of "circulade". It looks like this :







The outer ring of houses allowed for "easy" defence of the town.

Two centuries latter, there was a lot of "bastides" build in the south-west, because of anglo-french rivalry here. They are "squared" rather than round :






There was no fireball thrower during the middle age, but fire was a danger anyway.


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## Treebore

Aloïsius said:


> The first new fortified urbanisation during western europe middle age happened in southern France, and took the form of "circulade". It looks like this :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The outer ring of houses allowed for "easy" defence of the town.
> 
> Two centuries latter, there was a lot of "bastides" build in the south-west, because of anglo-french rivalry here. They are "squared" rather than round :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There was no fireball thrower during the middle age, but fire was a danger anyway.




Those are cool! I love Google Earth! I've been using it a lot looking at locations around the world that I am considering running my Twilight 2000/2013 game in/at.

One thing about "normal" fires, they were usually small in origin and slow moving, initially, in becoming bigger, so "fire brigades" have time to respond and get it under control and keep it under control and ultimately extinguish it. With Fireballs you have an area 40 foot in diameter to start off with, immediately, plus the fire is intense enough to incinerate people many times over, so it spreads quickly. So it is far more likely to be too big to get under control with normal fire brigades. So hopefully you have spell casters powerful enough to quickly extinguish such large fires on call. Otherwise, you better seriously consider redesigning how you lay out your towns, especially if your a town/city with a lot of "adventurers" in it. You never know when they will toss a fireball, or how many. Or at least build completely with stone and bricks to reduce the amount of ready fuel.


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## Henrix

Treebore said:


> One thing about "normal" fires, they were usually small in origin and slow moving, initially, in becoming bigger, so "fire brigades" have time to respond and get it under control and keep it under control and ultimately extinguish it.




Heh.

A house with a thatch roof can become a real firetrap within seconds. (Not modern houses, though, there are ways to prevent that.)

Now, your firefighting largely depends on one well within 50-100m, and as many buckets you can scrounge.
Your firefighters are volunteers, and at home sleeping.

Normal fires were not fun, nor in any way easy to control.


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## Treebore

Henrix said:


> Heh.
> 
> A house with a thatch roof can become a real firetrap within seconds. (Not modern houses, though, there are ways to prevent that.)
> 
> Now, your firefighting largely depends on one well within 50-100m, and as many buckets you can scrounge.
> Your firefighters are volunteers, and at home sleeping.
> 
> Normal fires were not fun, nor in any way easy to control.




Yeah, my only firefighting experience was my training in the Navy, and we only did the trainer once per year. Never had to deal with thatch roofs.


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## Alan Shutko

A big question is how common the threats are?  People tend to defend against catastrophic losses only if they feel they're likely to happen.

For a real world example, after the big St Louis flood of 1993 receded, millions of dollars were spent building homes and commercial property in land that was underwater within recent memory.  The people figure "Well, that was a hundred year flood, I'll be gone before it happens again."  

As long as dragons, and attacks from fireball wielding armies, are reasonably infrequent, people will ignore their capability to do harm.  Those big stone walls are great against defending against the goblin horde to the north... we don't need to worry about the off chance that a few wizards get pissed off at us.  That last happened to my grandfather... I'll be long gone before it happens again.


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## gizmo33

Alan Shutko said:


> As long as dragons, and attacks from fireball wielding armies, are reasonably infrequent, people will ignore their capability to do harm.




I disagree with this generalization.  I think people freak out as much about stuff that has no chance of happening (think about the genre-appropriate example of the witch hysteria) as they do ignore other things.  People go to great lengths to protect themselves from threats that are entirely imaginary, as well as those that are very unlikely.  I think the correlation here is what people believe, more than actual likelihood, and also how much control they feel that they have over a situation.

So why don't I think the flood example is a good match here?  Because a castle (and to some extent a walled town) can be seen as symbols of control and defense.  If people can get it in their minds that such things are easily destroyed, that's going to undermine the authority of the local rulers.   Knocking down buildings that have an important social function can *really* upset people.  If wandering bands of strangers (ie. adventurers) can burn down towns and collapse castle walls with impunity, this threatens the stability of the area.  IMO a ruler has the resources/information necessary to understand the problem and strong motivation to act on it.  

This doesn't mean that there aren't individuals who are willing to build their villages on flood plains or next to ogre lairs (especially if there's money to be made and insurance to collect).  And those sorts of people are probably full of all kinds of rationalizations.  But the security minded individuals in a society aren't going to sit around and wait for something bad to happen.  Witches are going to be burnt, ogres are going to be pre-emptively chased out of the woods, and metal detectors are going to be installed at the entrances of castles - regardless of the actual chances of anything happening.  If for no other reason that to make people feel secure.


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## NewJeffCT

gizmo33 said:


> I disagree with this generalization.  I think people freak out as much about stuff that has no chance of happening (think about the genre-appropriate example of the witch hysteria) as they do ignore other things.  People go to great lengths to protect themselves from threats that are entirely imaginary, as well as those that are very unlikely.  I think the correlation here is what people believe, more than actual likelihood, and also how much control they feel that they have over a situation.




While we know there was no chance of the "witches" really doing anything in terms of casting real spells upon people, the people of Salem, Mass (and elsewhere) thought differently 300+ years ago. While it was hysteria, they thought they had real live witches to deal with...

However, as the previous poster had mentioned, if there was no threat for the last hundred years, would there be hysteria over possible fireballs? I'm sure if Wally the evil wizard tried to torch the town yesterday, the town elders or town lord would soon afterwards attempt to take countermeasures in case Wally had a little brother or an angry wife bent on revenge.  However, if there was no subsequent attack after Wally was defeated, how long does the town keep on having nightly fire brigade patrols?  How many town wells are continually dedicated towards fire prevention, instead of towards providing water for people and livestock? How many buildings are built out of expensive (and heavy) stone instead of cheaper and renewable wood?


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## Treebore

I too often think it goes without saying, but you do have to look at what the "norms" of your particular game are going to be. How many wizards who can do fireballs are running around? How susceptible are your town populations to rumors? Especially when your striving for a game that feels as real as possible.

So if your running a game with a very low occurance of true spell casting, your going to have different base line assumptions about how your world works, how people view things, etc...


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## gizmo33

NewJeffCT said:


> While we know there was no chance of the "witches" really doing anything in terms of casting real spells upon people, the people of Salem, Mass (and elsewhere) thought differently 300+ years ago. While it was hysteria, they thought they had real live witches to deal with...




But IMO this makes my point.  Think of it this way:  chance of dying from witchcraft nowadays = 0%.  Chance of dying from witchcraft during the 1600s = 0%.  Nothing has actually changed about the underlying statistics - so it is very much about what people *thought*.  It's also very arguable that people even thought *at the time* that their chance of dying from witchcraft was greater than being killed from other causes.  I think it would be a misleading exaggeration to say that the people of the 1600s thought that the bulk of deaths occurred due to witchcraft.  

But then take it a step further.  Which is a more likely situation - dying in a car crash or an airplane crash?  Far more effort is spent in trying to prevent the one than the other.  This is not a matter of statistics, obviously (statistics that everyone actually knows).  This has to do with a psychology of perceived risk.  The amount of vulnerability people feel about a situation needs to be factored into the way a society prepares for the situation.   

This kind of thinking, arguably, was a huge motivator behind the witch hysteria of the 1600s.  Much to the point:  the concern about witches spread into areas *in spite of the fact* that there had been no previous activity.  People and their grandfathers don't need to have experienced it in order to be afraid of it.  And to spill a lot of ink and blood in an attempt to prevent it.  All it would take, given the right circumstances, is some lurid story (true or not) and some anxiety about the unknown.  What *could* happen scares people as much as any statistical information about what has happened (look at most of the television news).  

Consider a typical DnD world:  are there groups of strangers walking around with the capability to burn down your town?  Is there a sensational story being told in the taverns about such an occurrence (real or not)?  While a witch-hysteria-type reaction is an extreme case, I think it illustrates that people won't always ignore threats - even when they aren't statistically plausible.  

Now if one would like to make a lot of the "hasn't happened in 100 years" line of reasoning, then ultimately I concur with Treebore's comments.  At some point if the campaign world bears no resemblance to the "Points of Light" type campaign setting then it's beyond what I think my ideas can cover.  My comments were originally intended for a DM who felt that his towns were too vulnerable and support the notion that NPCs won't necessarily wait for something bad to happen before they are prepared.  Beyond that I don't think they can be of much use.


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