Settlements

[Elemental_Elf]

As I was looking at the maps of my campaign settings, I couldn't help but notice the fact that a large portion of the cities/towns/etc. were, in fact, nothing more than names on a map. I had very little, if any, story for the settlements, let alone a truly unique story hook. This got me thinking - when you look at fantasy worlds, and official D&D settings in particular, there seems to be a trend against the over use of settlements, preferring instead a much smaller number of settlements that each have their own detailed back stories and interesting cast of characters. My question to you is this - which method is better for the medium of world that, hopefully, will be used in actual play-sessions? Is the realism of having many settlements better than the more fantastic approach of less settlements? Does each town really need its own unique story and purpose or can there just be towns laying around for their own sake (and to fill holes on maps)? How many settlements are too many and, conversely, how many are too few?

[Ghostman]

Depends on how realistic the setting (or better yet, the game being run) is supposed to feel. In a surreal or heavily fairy tale-esque milieu one can afford to disregard all questions of feasibility, as the audience can be expected to maintain suspension of disbelief in the face of the most absurd of scenarios. On the opposite end of the spectrum (keeping this strictly on genres of fantasy) one finds simulationist low-fantasy worlds, where all the elements of the conworld can be expected to conform to the setting's internal "laws", which themselves ought to be logical and consistent.

Then there's also the matter of cartography and what should be expected of it. Should it be taken for granted that a map of a fantasy setting is consistent in it's inclusion and exclusion of elements? That if it displays one settlement of a certain size, then it must display all settlements of comparable size? Or can it be accepted that only points of actual interest to the audience may be visible, even if the map is otherwise intended to be accurate and unambgiuous?

Personally, I don't think that showing a large number of places on a map is much of a problem. Just because you can see them there doesn't mean you have to pay any attention to them, and their visibility can help communicate a sense of scale that might otherwise be distorted (ie. a map of a huge continent with very few towns on it might give the false impression of it being a smallish island).

A kind of a hybrid approach is to keep showing all the settlements, but only selectively including their names. That way the map can still communicate the presense of many towns in the densely populated areas, while at the same time focusing attention on the points of interest.

[Kindling]

Just as a slight addition to what Ghostman said, I don't think that few settlements necessarily equals unrealistic. There are any number of reasons, but mundane and fantastical, for people to only live in certain specific parts of the world and leave the rest as mostly wilderness. I'm sure it's not difficult to justify - the question is more, I suppose, do you want your world to be sparsely populated or not?

[O Senhor Leetz]

Arga has about a dozen, dozen and a half mapped settlements. Then again, they are the last bastions against the crumbling of the world. But just because you don't map a settlement doesn't mean it's not there. A thousand inconsequential hamlets could rest between two important cities.

Any antique map only has key, important settlements - like Rome, London, Jerusalem, etc. Especially if your map is in an "in-game" style, less makes sense, as maps were anything but complete in the Medieval Ages, Antiquity, or even the Renaissance to an extent.  

[Kaptn'Lath]

I find it has to do with the GM. If your good at improv then lots of non-fleshed out places is good, you can fill in the settlement with what you need at the moment, more structured GMs might like more filled out places to use with its own hooks

I am starting to have the same problem as you E_E hundreds of place names, only two fleshed out settlements... each settlement has atleast an idea attached to it

[Superfluous Crow]

I think you underestimate your own setting Leetz :D Your most recent map had close to 40.

Assuming a map of a rather large area (continent to world) I think one would do well (aesthetically) to make a map in line with Ghostman's hybrid, only more stylized: mark large cities visibly, but represent the rest of the civilized area with a vague structure or color difference (as if you were marking woodlands or mountains or any other kind of terrain). I can imagine you could do something nice with a tint of yellow or a vague noded spider web structure representing roads and farmlands.

As for the non-cartography perspective, I rarely make up things I don't think would be interesting somehow, even if they benefit verisimilitude, but I probably should. For small settlements you'd only ever pass through I have a hard time thinking how you'd represent them. They hardly warrant an entire section for themselves. Perhaps folding them in under their associated trade hub (a large city warranting description) could work. Slip in a few mentions of local stories and myths, the reasons for their founding or their name, calamities or troubled times and they'll quickly seem like real places.  

[Lmns Crn]

I think that a lot depends on what kind of feel you want for the world. If I were running something techno-futuro-apocalyptico, I'd want a different population spread than if I were running a trackless new continent in need of intrepid explorers. I suspect that a lot of world-writers gloss over small settlements not to downplay their importance or to imply that there aren't any, but because of time constraints and the understanding that GMs and players will create them as-needed. (If I tell you enough about the Ithyrian province of Arnix, I can be reasonably comfortable that GMs and players can get the feel of the place enough to imagine a "typical Arnixian village" pretty well.)

Even if I could snap my fingers to instantly, effortlessly provide exquisite detail about every tin-pan township in my world, I don't think that I would. Two reasons why not. First, I like leaving some blanks for individual groups to fill in the way they want to; I think that's important. I don't want to hand a GM an almanac; I just want to give some basic, guiding structure and let them take off on their own.

Second, reading through a list of a few hundred squalid hamlets is hella dull, folks. So I give a writeup only if I think it's going to be worth reading. Outposts on the border of dangerous natural features, villages caught in the vicegrips of war... I'll go out of my way to write about those and omit the others, so that the interesting bits don't have to fight for attention amid a sea of same-same.

[Weave]

I go for what Ghostman does: put a fair amount of settlements along the map, but only label the important ones. When my players are traveling across an area I usually think of a few names ahead of time, labeling them as they get to them.

Sometimes I give them something interesting, like maybe the village of so-and-so has a magic well that supplies the water for the people and miraculously cures the diseases of all who sip from it, or something. Otherwise, I might hardly mention the place outside of its name. I would say that my players had resupplied at the nearby town of BLANK and was on their way along the road again. They don't seem to mind and it makes my life as DM way easier.

[LordVreeg]

Population density is a within-setting issue.  Make sure the density makes sense, but there is little right and wrong.


Celtricia has large open areas, but there are areas with many settlements.  For example, Igbar (44k inhab) is a city, but Igtiche (700 inhabs), the farming community is a day away on the edge of the Tiche Plains, there is a Teque Travelers guild outpost (280 inhabs) 1 day north from Igbar, another larger one a day south (450 inhabs)and Ocodig (1290 inhabs) is 3 days north of Igbar, with Harbath Keep(290 inhabs) 2 hours journey west on the coast.  Walker's Glory (2100 Inhabs) is 2.5 days walking briskly from Igbar. This s because Igbar is a large central population center.  So that makes 7 settlements of some size within a 3.5 day trip of Igbar.  All of these are well fleshed out.

There are also just over 1000 unacculturated humanoids in the Firehazer tribes in the Wibble hills, hugging the coast between Igbar and Ocodig, as well as over 2500 unnaculterated humanoids in the southern Zyjmanese in the souther eaves of the Astrickon Forest.

DOn't know if that was useful...Hope so.  

[Polycarp]

I'm of the opinion that if a city of size X is located and named on a map, any equivalent city of size X should also be located and named.  Points of interest are well and good, but when it comes to large population centers, it should be assumed that they are inherently interesting - and if they aren't, you should make them so.  It's one thing to exclude all villages and hamlets but include a certain one with some interesting story (a powerful wizard lives here, it was the site of a great battle, it is an important trading post in the wilderness), but a town or city of significant size really should have a history and some interesting landmarks and features.

As for realistic vs. fantasy, that assumes a specific kind of world.  A stereotypical medieval "dark ages" land might be expected to have very few cities, with most of the population living in small villages with no need for identification on a map, and that would be realistic rather than fantastical.  You can count the cities in my own setting on two hands even though the known world is larger than the continental US because of specific historical and (more importantly) environmental reasons against urbanization.

I've been meaning to make a sort of "settlement generator" for CJ for some time, the idea being that you could use information like the settlement's race and regional location to randomly determine things like the name, population, leadership, and interesting hooks and problems.  I've done it before for villages in other campaigns past as a way to build a village on the fly or provide myself with ideas when I needed my players to wander through some provincial backwater.  Even if you don't actually feel like random generation, a list of such attributes and features can be really useful.

[Xeviat]

I'm only going to be putting cities and very important towns on the map; for villages and "settled land" as a whole, I'm just shading that on the map. Villages are going to dot the landscape in these areas.

As for the cities and towns themselves, they'll have reason to be where they are, and I think that will help them to grow. Laketon, for example, is a town midway up the mountains. It boarders a large lake created from snow runoff. It is a trade point between Humans and Dwarves, using the river to then send the goods into Human lands. As a trade center, it has far more inns and taverns than a city of its size would have. Eventually, I'll decide upon its ruling system (aside from its Senator that lives in the capitol).

I do really like to use http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm especially for the Merchants and Services table, mixed with the 3.5E DMG's settlement generator.