# [Campaign Design] Let's talk town and city size - what's optimal for different kinds of campaigns? Etc



## Mercurius (Dec 14, 2013)

Obviously this is a vague question, or rather series of questions, and a lot depends upon what role said settlement will have in one's campaign, but I wanted to open up a discussion about city and town population and design and how you use settlements in your campaign. What population size is best for different usages? Do levels matter? Etc.

To refresh everyone's memories, D&D 3e breaks it down into thorp, hamlet, village, small and large town, small and large city, and metropolis. For the sake of simplicity, I like 4e's breakdowns with villages being up to about 1,000, towns up to about 10,000, cities up to about 25,000 and metropolises over 25,000, with small and large variations within those ranges.

It seems that most classic D&D campaigns start off in some kind of small town - whetherFallcrest (1,350) in Nentir Vale, Sandpoint (1,240) in Golarion, or Shadowdale (1,402) in the Forgotten Realms.

The large city is also a common setting, with Korvosa (18,486) and Magnimar (16,428) fitting that category in Golarion, and Neverwinter (23,192) in the Forgotten Realms.

The metropolis ranges widely, but each setting has its own - from Greyhawk (69,500) to Waterdeep (132,661) in the Realms, to Absalom (303,900) and Katepesh (212,300) in Golarion.

Historically speaking, the ancient cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt ranged in the tens of thousands, with cities reaching into the hundreds of thousands by classical antiquity (e.g. Carthage, Rome, Babylon), with Rome and Alexandria being the first cities to reach the million mark around two thousand years ago (according to this page). In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the largest cities ranged in the lower hundreds of thousands, although some cities in China and the Islamic world were larger. But populations didn't go significantly above one million until after the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century, with London over 6 million by 1900 (for those interested, this Wikipedia page is also very useful).

So tell me about your campaign. What is your preferred "homebase" size? Does it vary by level? In other words, do the PCs start in a village or small town and then graduate to a larger city or metropolis? Do your settlements range in population similarly to the D&D norms? While we're at it, what is the largest settlement in your world? Do you break the historical rules and have a city well over a million (remember Calimport in the old 2E days, with a population, I think, of 2 or 3 million?)

For my campaign, the starting settlement is a sizable village, with a small town about 10-20 miles away, a large city about 100 miles away, and a metropolis a few hundred miles away. I find that gives the setting a wilderness vibe, but also makes larger centers of population just close enough to be accessible, but not too easily.

The setting is pretty new so I haven't figured out all of the largest cities, but the largest probably range at a couple hundred thousand, with perhaps one city in my version of the far East being significantly larger. In other words, I stick to the historical norms, for the most part.


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## Yora (Dec 14, 2013)

It depends mostly on the setting. In my bronze age barbarian setting, there are only seven real cities on the entire continent and the local centers of civilization are usually just fortified towns of two or three thousand people.
But even with the same development level you could still do a greek style city state campaign, which would mean you need quite a lot of cities with 10,000+ people at the very least.


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## Libramarian (Dec 14, 2013)

How about we define settlements by something more relevant to the play experience than population size.

It doesn't matter how many people are there*; it matters how many plot seeds are there. How many moving pieces.

Let's try defining settlements in terms of the number of NPCs with unique personalities and agendas:
Village: a handful
Town: a dozen
City: three dozen
Metropolis: five dozen+

Along with maybe the power level PCs should be if they expect to mix it up with the movers and shakers:
Village: 1-3
Town: 4-8
City: 9-14
Metropolis: 15+

*This is true for real world travellers as well of course. If you're taking a trip to Japan you'll certainly want to visit Kyoto, with its high concentration of historically and culturally important sites, but don't necessarily need to see the industrial city of Yokohama, despite the fact that its population is over twice as large.


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## pemerton (Dec 15, 2013)

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION], excellent post, sorry I can't XP.


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## Storminator (Dec 15, 2013)

In my recent campaign I started the PCs in a goblin city (they're all goblins). I never defined how big the city was. The first few adventures revolved around the clan, and essentially, the PCs knew everyone in the clan.

Then the adventures moved out into the city, and it was big enough that there were dangerous places the PCs had never been, but they had at least heard of everyone in the adventures.

Later, the campaign moved to big cities. There plot threads can easily go outside of all knowledge the PCs have. 

I think that's pretty standard for my campaigns. How much unknown is there in the settlement? 

PS


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## Mercurius (Dec 15, 2013)

Libramarian said:


> How about we define settlements by something more relevant to the play experience than population size.
> 
> It doesn't matter how many people are there*; it matters how many plot seeds are there. How many moving pieces.




Interesting perspective and one I would find more resonance with if I saw "play experience" as the ultimate goal and point of campaign design. But I also enjoy it for the sake of the activity itself - world building.

Actually, this is one of the things I love about our hobby: it is so multi-faceted. There are at least four things I can think of off the top of my head that are all significant components of enjoyment of the hobby or me: actual play, campaign design/world building, collecting and reading RPG books and other fun stuff, and thinking and talking about the industry. There's also a social element, but I don't feel that's specific to the hobby itself.

But in terms of play experience, I find that world building augments it. So knowing the population of a city is one of many data points that can bring the city alive.


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## Evilhalfling (Dec 15, 2013)

I tend to gravitate campaigns to small cities of about 10k.
Its small enough that the PCs can interact with the rulers, although there is usually some level of bureaucracy/inconvenience.  There is a reasonable expectation of becoming well known in the city by 6th level, and major movers and shakers by 8-9th.  

You don't have to account for ubermages, High Priests, and others that should be able to hand wave most of the communities problems, but they are some on hand if you need a raise dead or reasonably common magic item.

I don't really favor starting in villages - for example my next campaign includes 2 barbarians (human and 1/2 orc), a drow sorceress, and a human paladin.  Previous campaigns have involved PC bladelings, githzari, and Genasi. You need at least a veneer of cosmopolitanism to make it work.

As for the number of PCs with personalities and agendas, its sometimes easier to do in a small town than in a metro.  One of my favorite small towns was a dwarven town where they sent all the unwanted members of society.  The Roofing guild had the attitudes of teamsters.  The piemaker was bad, and the alchemist who provided musical thunderstones and smokesticks in a variety of interesting flavors was a big hit.  The pie maker kept trying to serve a "4 fold fruit pie with a chocolate rum-raisin ganash".  There were bluff checks to avoid offending her when given "reward" pies.

But eventually you solve the small towns problems, and its time to move on.


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## steeldragons (Dec 15, 2013)

We had a lil' discussion on this...wow! 3 years ago?!...already? Anywho, there's this:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?295151-Thoughts-on-Distance&highlight=

I'm not sure there is an answer for figuring the "optimum for campaigns" part of the OP. I mean, that depends on what you want out of the campaign. 

If you want a lot of courtly politics and intrigue, starting in the 500 inhabitant farming village of Bumfrak is probably unwarranted/a waste of time.

If you want the whole "you meet in a tavern" Old School experience...then maybe Bumfrak is fine...so long as there's a tavern there (and I don't think I've ever in all my DMing years, ever created a village, town or city that doesn't have at least 1 place for the locals to socialize/drown their sorrows...hmm. What's _that_ sayin'?]

If you want a place with/where the bulk of the adventures are going to take place in a sprawling urban sewer system, you need a decent-sized city (if not metropolis) to accommodate that.

Want a blank slate to trot out all of the NPCs you've been creating for countless, unused, years? Just about anywhere will do, so long as the population warrants the number of NPCs (classed or not) that you're going to have wandering about for the PCs to trip over...er...um...interact with.

 I tend to think (and I guess I got this from the other distance/population type threads that have been over the years), just as rough estimates:
"village" is anything up to 1,000
I would give "town" 1,000-5,000.
"large or fortified town" 5,000-10,000
"city" 10,000+ ["large city" is just that]
"metropolis" would be anything over...say...20,000 [effectively, if it's 2 'cities' in a single place, it's a metropolis].

I think I have only 3 metropoli in all of my homebrew world. They are there and I just think of them as "the biggest cities", not a whole separate category. Off the top of my head (and I might be wrong) Orea's "Waterdeep" is all of about 85k. That's the largest [by population and territory/mileage covered/built up] city in the world.

I also have certain areas of the setting that are more densely populated than others...where travel might be easier, inns/villages/hamlets at each day's distance or so, regions where [as someone said] an ancient empire's roads make multi-day travel fairly common (though still dangerous what with the bandits, wolves, et al), and some villages where the closest cleric who can bring you back from the dead is in a town 3 days away (or further). 

I also really like [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] 's ideas of categorizing by relevant NPC instead of random [agreed upon, but ultimately random] numbers. That's a great idea.


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## Kinak (Dec 15, 2013)

I like starting in a village or town, with several cities within reasonable traveling distance. I don't touch truly massive cities (Ptolus, Waterdeep, Absalom) unless I'm planning on a ton of urban adventure, but they're usually around.

For building a campaign world, I usually lay out the cities (and possibly one metropolis per region). Villages and towns get created as they're needed.

But lately, I've been focusing more on building starting areas than whole regions or continents. I've found knowing every nook and cranny of the surrounding forest and mountains, with all the little towns, is far more valuable than global-level details.

It's still fun to detail whole worlds, of course, but I try not to think of it as GM prep.



pemerton said:


> @_*Libramarian*_ , excellent post, sorry I can't XP.



Covered that for you.

Cheers!
Kinak


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## pemerton (Dec 15, 2013)

For interest, in late 14th century England there were 3 towns/cities larger than 10,000 people:

London 40,000
York 12,100
Bristol 10,600​
and another 19 towns/cities with 3000 or more inhabitants (as I understand the list I'm looking at, a city is defined by the presence of a cathedral - London and York are cities, Bristol is not). The overall level of urbanisation was around 6% to 7%.

Source: Ian Mortimer, _The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England_ (Vintage, 2009) citing WG Hoskins, _Local History in England_ (3rd ed, 1984) who extrapolates from the 1377 poll tax returns.


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## Ahnehnois (Dec 15, 2013)

Well, I've done it every way. Generally, I think big cities are better for campaigns that focus on social interaction and avoid combat, and I think it's hard to do a big city in D&D without emphasizing the "magic as technology" vibe.

The thing about smaller settlements is that by comparison, they make the PCs seem exceptional. In a big city, a 10th level fighter isn't anything out of the ordinary, but in a village, he could probably wipe out the entire population if he wanted to. Conversely, he can also take care of a problem big enough to wipe out the entire village. In a small settlement, you can actually sell the idea that magic and weird races and things are out of the ordinary and that peasants don't understand them, where as its hard to imagine an urbanite being ignorant of such basic things.

I think my campaigns probably are determined at least in part along those lines. If I'm trying to make the PCs seem important, a small town is the starting venue. If I'm emphasizing that the world is bigger than them, no better way to do it than a city full of D&D characters.


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