Turakian Populations

[Daisho]

Is there a guide to the population numbers? I have proportions, etc, but no actual numbers. (At least that I can find)

 

Craig.

[Labrat]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Is there a guide to the population numbers? I have proportions, etc, but no actual numbers. (At least that I can find)

 

Craig.

 

Do you want city-wide populations or military troop estimates? It's all very hand-wavy, but it was done like this in TA on purpose. I think Steve was very wise in doing it this way since it is now GM-defined...

 

I think the rule of thumb is for there to be 1 soldier per 100 citizens. YMMV.

[arcady]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

I'm glad they left numbers like that out.

 

Time and time again I have been severely disapointed by RPG companies that have a grossly inacurrate understanding of demographics.

 

If it is important to you, you can figure it out with very simple research. If it is not important to you, the numbers are just wasting page space.

 

It -IS- important to me, and getting it wrong is just a good way to get me pissed at you. After all, if you put the numbers in in the first place, you're putting them in only for those who care, so get it right for those people, or leave it out. Those of us who care about it find it vitally important to get it right, and the research on doing so is easier than doing a third grade history report on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address... So there's -ZERO EXCUSE- for getting as grossly wrong as so many other RPG publishers do...

 

If you want to find the most basic starting point for research, google up "Medieval Demographics Made Easy".

 

The concepts in there can hold for Turakian fairly well, though Turakian and Valdorian are -both- likely to be -HIGHER- than the medieval period's average of from 40-100 people per mile. The medieval number after all, dealt with issues of plague and warfare at those periods. Numbers like those found in American expansion are unique to the industrial technology and rapid spread, not something to base a fantasy setting off of as so many publishers have done...

[Daisho]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Well thanks for the opinions. I assume that this means there are no numbers. Very well.

 

As to not including numbers, I have to agree that there are some worlds which have ludicrous demographics, but hey, it's fantasy. Numbers can go a long way towards giving an author's ideas about relative population density. Two kingdoms: side by side and the same size of territory, one might very well have a lower population. Why? A lot of possibilities, but it does. This affects military and economic power, etc.

 

As for deduction, it's great to establish what a medieval equivalent territory would have, but how do you account for the ravages of magical devastation? How about the possibility of denser populations for protection from the predation of non-medieval influences (AKA: monsters) or specifically how about a civilization like Thun? Surely the lack of external conflicts for thousands of years would cause a tremendous rise in populations? What about Drakine lands, same or higher density? How much higher? How much lower? My argument is that fantasy worlds (with the possible exception of Harn) are not analgous to medieval ones. I understand others might have pet peeves about demographics, but I just want to know how big a city is. Or a country. Or a people.

 

I was curious about published numbers (as compared to numbers that I deduce) mainly to capture to flavor of the world as Hero sees it, not me.

 

But, thanks for the answer.

 

Craig

"No plan survives contact with the enemy" - Von Molke

[arcady]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Well, if you don't understand demographics, and can't do the 20 minutes of reading to learn it, but want to set out differences, just use textual descriptions like "densely populated and overcrowded," or "sparse, with most of the residents being tumbleweeds."

 

That can work a lot better than saying:

 

Empire X is ancient with bizantine politics and crowded streets. It's 1000 by 1000 mile space of land has 1 million people.

 

Which, by the way, is 1 person per mile, so small that it couldn't support any kind of civilization. By Medieval standards, during the black plague, there should be about 70,000,000 people in that space of land.

 

Giving it to us in text makes it play out better.

 

A GM can work with 'crowded, overpopulated streets' and create a lot better ambiance in the game than if given '208 people per square mile' (which is still not crowded by modern standards).

 

Most of the elements that are brought up for populations in fantasy have real world paralels that can be used to make guesses.

 

Monsters? Lions and Tigers, and Bears, and Wolves... all of which presented a real and pressing danger to preindustrial societies.

 

Magical blight can be mapped to Europe's many diseases if the magic is going to be on a grand scale. On the small scale of most fantasy magic it maps to about the effect that Catapults had on reducing peasant populations - very little.

 

Magical boosts and aids map well to early medicine, literacy, and other factors such as trade.

 

Trade does more than lack of war to influence populations.

 

Some of the smallest societies on Earth have had little to no history of war. The Inuit have no concept of war for example. Many Amazonian groups only have small scale tribal conflicts. Many Polynesians only had their own internal byzantine affairs.

 

Isolation is what really keeps you down. War can be a population boon. It brings in trade goods, resources, and maybe even genetic mixing. If it doesn't wipe you out, it can be a boon that lasts for generations to come.

 

beyond isolation, the next major factor comes in food staples and beasts of burden. How much food surplus can you produce and how far can you ship it... How many people does it take to produce it, and how well can it support them. Do they need to be close knit to do so?

 

Consider rice - needs a lot of people working together in close knit cooperation. Thus pre industrial Asia still had the vast populations it has today.

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

A lot of the time, the RPG companies think "modern city" and have a tendency to base fantasy cities on Rome. But Rome was an exception to the concept of a medieval city.

[arcady]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

A lot more of them model their societies on America and Australia where you have thinly sparsed settlement conflicting with nomadic groups.

 

The thin settlements of the whites however were only possible due to industrial technology. Prior to these two examples agrarian (farming) civilizations were almost always very thickly settled - a village every mile and often people living in famring collectives.

 

Just look at the difference between New England and the Great Plains of the USA. As for farming collectives, that was the model of both feudalism and the American South.

[Susano]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Speaking of cities, it has been pointed out that when the SCA holds it Pennsic War in August, roughly 10-12,000 people show up. That's more people in one place than something like 99% of the cities in Europe circa 1400. The exceptions are Paris, Rome, and London.

[arcady]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Most fantasy underestimates city populations.

 

There were unusual exceptions in Europe that made its cities smaller than those in other parts of the world at that time or in earlier periods on similar technology.

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Large cities are exceptional - it is very difficult to organise the movement of large amounts of food and water necessary to sustain a large population.

 

The only way a fantasy setting can have large cities is with magic - because in general most (if not all) fantasy setting have wandering monsters, brigands, nearby lairs and dungeons, or evil magicians bent on nefarious plans. All these things are not conducive for Joe Farmer to take his goods to market.

 

I can only imagine that either there is magical transport, or there is a magical way of producing more food in a smaller area.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

That's the solution that I had to take for Savage Earth. I wanted a S&S model of powerful but isolated cities, surrounded by untrackable wilderness filled with barbarians and monsters. I found that in order to make it work, I had to do some serious behind-the-scenes work in setting up the world's ecology, economy and technology.

 

The "magical" technology the locals use is such that it rapidly becomes useless the farther you are from the city. It does promote crop yields miraculous even to today's post "Green Revolution" agriculture, but again, only within a certain distance of the city. Also, some of the Bad Things out in the wilds are insurmountable to a civilized population looking to spread.

 

It's why I've found such sites as the Medieval demographics calculator of limited usefulness. They make too many assumptions that don't fit my campaign.

 

But in the very end, unless you obsess about every conceivable detail of your campaign world, spending more time on it than on real life and pursue multiple PhD's in order to provide unprecedented verisimilitude, something will have to be hand-waved. For all practical purposes, if something looks good to the eye, it's probably good enough to let you have fun.

 

Keith "2¢" Curtis

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

As my father said when he was a teacher - you only need to be a lesson ahead of your students.

 

A GM only needs to know more than they players are likely to need, and doesn't need every detail. Only if you players are likely to use economic means to cripple cities, should you bother with demographics....

 

If they start, you could always just throw a monster at them

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

I think the real point here is, there are as many people in a given country as you need for your group to have fun playing in that setting.

 

What those numbers look like from group to group will vary greatly based on the level of versimilitude that group (or certain players or the GM) desire.

 

 

Having said that, you can also just take advantage of the dodge that the census process is probably poor to non-existant by todays standards, so dealing in nice round numbers that everyone knows are not really accurate is totally doable.

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Yes, after all the Domesday Census was an historical event because it was so rare for a census to be taken (and because of the levels of detail it went too)

 

Besides, players should know very little about their world - unless they are in some form of government/authority and are in foreign affairs

Most times they only care if there is going to be a war soon. Or if travelling somwhere, how they might be viewed by the natives, and possibly how not to commit faux pas..

[keithcurtis]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

As my father said when he was a teacher - you only need to be a lesson ahead of your students.

 

A GM only needs to know more than they players are likely to need, and doesn't need every detail. Only if you players are likely to use economic means to cripple cities, should you bother with demographics....

 

If they start, you could always just throw a monster at them

Exactly. When I wrote up my ftl drive for my Solar Colonies campaign, I had three pages of justification, theory and mathematics.

Then I wrote it all into a spreadsheet that the players could just pick point A and point B, mass and "fuel", and get an answer spat back. I know how it works; they don't need to.

 

Keith "At least not at that detail" Curtis

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

An my favourite quote on this from JMS-

 

RPGer researching the B5 game: "How fast do the ships go?"

JMS: "The ships move at the speed of plot"

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

An my favourite quote on this from JMS-

 

RPGer researching the B5 game: "How fast do the ships go?"

JMS: "The ships move at the speed of plot"

An absolutely fantastic answer.

[Labrat]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

This is actually very interesting and very helpful. Let me ask a few questions.

 

Based on what I've read (the internet is always true as you know ):

Medieval London Pop. was ~20,000. I would take this to be a fairly typical Turakian Age city.

Rome during the Empire Pop. was ~1,000,000 (the indigent population was ~20,000!), but during the Medieval Era was about 50,000. I would use 50,000 as a number to represent a capital (Cyradon, for example) or a large harbor city (Aarn, for example).

For gradiation I could add or remove as many as 5000 people to a land-locked city, based on how far it was from the capital and add as many as 10,000 people for a popular maritime hub.

 

Do those estimates hold up for a near-medieval setting? Thanks for you input!

[Susano]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

These numbers sound good to me.

[Vondy]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

A lot of the time' date=' the RPG companies think "modern city" and have a tendency to base fantasy cities on Rome. But Rome was an exception to the concept of a medieval city.[/quote']

 

Probably because the Rome they're basing it on wasn't midieval - its Rome at its apex as the gem of the classical world. It also depends what part of the middle ages we're talking about. The high middle ages (1000-12000) had the smaller numbers consider "normal" for the midieval period. Cities of 7,500-10,000 would be much more probable, with the rare one apporaching 20,000. But by the latter middle ages several cities had become highly-urbanized with a notable population density. And there's also a question of where. The Byzantium Empire (Rome continued to the 14th century) and the Muslim countries had much larger urban centers than Europe. And lets not even talk about the Chinese and Japanese of the period! There's a bigger problem with using midieval numbers than picking which midieval period or region to use, though. The problem is this: the Tukarian age isn't midieval! Its not even classical! We might try to use numbers from the sumerians or babylonians (higher than the middle ages), but even that would prove farscial. The source material the Tukarian Age is trying to capture doesn't reflect a real world period. If you want "accurate" Tukarian Age city sizes you have to thumb through the source material - and those cities won't look very midieval when you're done.

[Labrat]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Probably because the Rome they're basing it on wasn't midieval - its Rome at its apex as the gem of the classical world. It also depends what part of the middle ages we're talking about. The high middle ages (1000-12000) had the smaller numbers consider "normal" for the midieval period. Cities of 7' date='500-10,000 would be much more probable, with the rare one apporaching 20,000. But by the latter middle ages several cities had become highly-urbanized with a notable population density. And there's also a question of where. The Byzantium Empire (Rome continued to the 14th century) and the Muslim countries had much larger urban centers than Europe. And lets not even talk about the Chinese and Japanese of the period! There's a bigger problem with using midieval numbers than picking which midieval period or region to use, though. The problem is this: the Tukarian age isn't midieval! Its not even classical! We might try to use numbers from the sumerians or babylonians (higher than the middle ages), but even that would prove farscial. The source material the Tukarian Age is trying to capture doesn't reflect a real world period. If you want "accurate" Tukarian Age city sizes you have to thumb through the source material - and those cities won't look very midieval when you're done.[/quote']

 

 

So 'cities of note', such as the five or so listed in the Mhendarian Palatinate would be ~20,000 men, or ~20,000 total people? That's the other distinction that needs to be made. I think that censuses used to count men only (men of fighting age anyway). I could be off, and probably am.

 

Would the outlying cities of such a system be the ones that you mention as having ~10,000 people?

 

Thanks for your input, guys.

[Vondy]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

So 'cities of note', such as the five or so listed in the Mhendarian Palatinate would be ~20,000 men, or ~20,000 total people? That's the other distinction that needs to be made. I think that censuses used to count men only (men of fighting age anyway). I could be off, and probably am.

 

Would the outlying cities of such a system be the ones that you mention as having ~10,000 people?

 

Thanks for your input, guys.

 

If you use the numbers from the high middle ages in europe then major cities would run ~20,000, with smaller cities running between 5,000-10,000, but you should keep in mind that over 90% of the midieval population was rural, and that cities were the exception to the rule. England of the high middle ages only had three or four urban population centers - meaning something we would call a city. Your average "major settlment" was likely to be centered on a keep or abbey and run from the mid hundreds to something less than a thousand: 600-800 would be a good guess (and this would be the smallest settlement type that would generally support an inn or a few public houses). That's if you use numbers from Europe and the High Middle Ages. If you work eastward (byzantium, the islamic orient, asia) you will find cities got larger and larger. A japanese population record from 1496 has Osaka at 2.7 million... Shanghai in the middle ages (even what europe would term its dark ages) was easily in the millions as well.

 

I would recommend using the source materials, though. The Tukarian Age isn't the high middle ages. If we look at Moorcock's Melnibone we see major cities are densely urban, but surrounded by more typical midieval settlements of a few hundred. The major cities, however, probably run close to 100,000. And the same is true of Howard's conan stories. Nemedia, for instance, is loosely modelled on classical rome and probably has a population approaching a million souls, all told. Many other cities are also quite large.

 

Something else to consider is that the governments in some of these stories (especially howard's) didn't follow the midieval fuedal model very well. They often had extensive civil services that are not dissimilar from Byzantium and the Roman or Asian systems. Cultures with these sorts of systems had better infrastructure and tax collecting abilities. This led to more organized, bigger militia's and more money for public works and larger cities in general. The outlying settlments would still be rural and fairly small (I'm specifically thinking of byzantium - asia's population density has always been dense).

 

The question is: do you want your tukarian age to look like moorcock and howard and the other source material writers out there, or do you want it to look like the england of richard the lionheart?

[Labrat]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

If you use the numbers from the high middle ages in europe then major cities would run ~20' date='000, with smaller cities running between 5,000-10,000, but you should keep in mind that over 90% of the midieval population was rural, and that cities were the exception to the rule. England of the high middle ages only had three or four urban population centers - meaning something we would call a city. Your average "major settlment" was likely to be centered on a keep or abbey and run from the mid hundreds to something less than a thousand: 600-800 would be a good guess (and this would be the smallest settlement type that would generally support an inn or a few public houses). That's if you use numbers from Europe and the High Middle Ages. If you work eastward (byzantium, the islamic orient, asia) you will find cities got larger and larger. A japanese population record from 1496 has Osaka at 2.7 [i']million... [/i]Shanghai in the middle ages (even what europe would term its dark ages) was easily in the millions as well.

 

I would recommend using the source materials, though. The Tukarian Age isn't the high middle ages. If we look at Moorcock's Melnibone we see major cities are densely urban, but surrounded by more typical midieval settlements of a few hundred. The major cities, however, probably run close to 100,000. And the same is true of Howard's conan stories. Nemedia, for instance, is loosely modelled on classical rome and probably has a population approaching a million souls, all told. Many other cities are also quite large.

 

Something else to consider is that the governments in some of these stories (especially howard's) didn't follow the midieval fuedal model very well. They often had extensive civil services that are not dissimilar from Byzantium and the Roman or Asian systems. Cultures with these sorts of systems had better infrastructure and tax collecting abilities. This led to more organized, bigger militia's and more money for public works and larger cities in general. The outlying settlments would still be rural and fairly small (I'm specifically thinking of byzantium - asia's population density has always been dense).

 

The question is: do you want your tukarian age to look like moorcock and howard and the other source material writers out there, or do you want it to look like the england of richard the lionheart?

 

Well its all more out of curiosity than anything for me, I don't plan per se to run any major combats (they happen I would hesitate to run one as a table-top combat as of right now). The population info is more for how easily one could hide in the throngs, lets say, or what types of towns would be good meccas for supplies and trading. Those kinds of things.

 

This is very valuable info, D-Man, and for this you shall be duly rep't. Thanks again.

[arcady]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Large cities are exceptional - it is very difficult to organise the movement of large amounts of food and water necessary to sustain a large population.

Around 1000 through 1400 AD the world was full of large cities, they just weren't in Europe.

[Curufea]

Re: Turakian Populations

 

Well, they were probably better organised

 

Europe is a better example for fantasy settings because of its near constant anarchy and civil strife - which matches the concept of wandering adventurers. Although there is much to be said for mythic China as well...

 

Just bear in mind that cities don't produce food or water - so they have import it from somewhere. As the Turakian Age is High Fantasy, my first thought is magic. So if you want low populations, go for realism. If you want high populations, have more domestic magic.

 

[edit] I just realised "anarchy" is probably too strong a word. Possibly "lack of cohesive organisation" - the insular nature of settlements and the slowness of communication.