Points of Light Question

[Crow]

I am trying to come up with a town for my upcoming Inward-Out (build-style) 3.5 campaign world, and have decided that I want to use the "Points of Light" premise in building it.

However, I am having difficulty determining how large these points of light should actually be. While the initial thorp that the players start in is manageable, because the amount of farm and grazeland required for the small population is not huge, I am having trouble reconciling the basic "points of light" premise with the real-world implications of such a setting. I would like the characters to be able to eventually come to large towns or even cities, but the surrounding lands that these places require just to support their own populace is staggering, and really requires that the setting be more "Blobs of Light".

The only solution I can think of to make this work is to have the distances between cities be so vast that the areas surrounding these cities and towns is insignificant in comparison.

Anybody else have some insight on this?

Also, anybody have any real idea how much farm and grazeland a 50-villager thorpe would actually require? (I just kinda guessed, and am prolly way off, most likely under, at about 3.5 acres...No knowledge of this whatsoever, lol)

[The_Pyre]

Wow, that's a lot of details you're working into your world. Will your players really notice if you leave some of them vague?

Assuming you can get away with a little vagueness, you can just model your world around World of Warcraft. I'm not sure if you can still consider that points of light, though.

[Dhavaer]

There is an essay somewhere explaining how much land is need to support a settlement, looking now.

Edit: found, Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm). Apparently 1 square mile will support 180 people. More than I'd have thought.

[Tiki Snakes]

As I see it, there's arguable a small assumption in your setup there, that when removed, may just remove the problem.

The idea behind points of light is that the world is dark and scarey, with small safe-havens, (such as walled towns, or so on).

Towns need resources, including arable land, to be sustainable.

But the farmland doesn't actually have to be safe, and the town doesn't have to be prosperous! In a points of light setup, being a farmer is a dangerous job, and you'll really have to take care in your daily tasks, or you might get eaten by wolves. Perhaps some foul creature will, merely by wandering by, cause your entire crop to fail, causing you and your family to starve. It's okay, because someone else will probably take the land when you are dead, and see if they can't make a better living than you managed.

The few who can afford to live in a walled city protect their lot jealously, because it really, really does not do to live outside the walls.

Similarly, small thrope's would have to be careful, lest something gribbly wander through their village and snuff out their little point of light overnight. You should expect at least crude fortifications, or a secure location for the villagers to gather when stuff gets dangerous.

TL;DR, The town casts a small area of bright light, and a larger area of dim illumination. If you are a very small light, you are liable to get snuffed anyway.

[KillianHawkeye]

I agree with what Tiki said.



To add to that, in general you could imagine that all the necessary farmland is probably no more than half a day's travel away from the city or village that's supported by it, whereas it probably takes several days (travelling through a dark, monster-infested forest) to reach the next notable settlement.

[Noble Savant]

Magic can also solve a lot of these problems, no matter which edition you use. Even if mages don't Create Food for everyone, magic can easily water the fields to perfection, alchemy can enhance seeds, and prayer that actually works can ensure an excellent harvest. This could affect the amount of farmland needed by a significant amount compared to our world.

[Urpriest]

If the big cities have Create Food traps, they don't need extensive farmland. Emperor Tippy has said that the Tippyverse was originally supposed have the sort of Points of Light structure you're going for.