[3.5, Eberron] Scale Issues?

[Big Fau]

I know the writers weren't specialists or anything, and I'm no expert myself, but doesn't 2,000,000 people seem a bit... thin for an entire country (Aundair)? Breland's got 3,700,000, Darguun has a mere 800,000 (and has a population consisting primarily of a race known for spreading like wildfire), and even Karrnath has a rather meek population.

And looking at the continent itself, it's 10 times the size of Australia. Khorvaire's demographics just don't seem to add up. I get the war was devastating, but a country that big should not have a population that small. Given that kind of an error, I think it is safe to assume other continents have a similar problem.

What kind of adjustment should be made to rectify this?

[tyckspoon]

Last time this came up (re: distances and transportation costs, I think?) there was some reference to a writer saying 'yeah, somebody screwed that up, everything should be like a factor of ten smaller.'

[Matticussama]

I know the writers weren't specialists or anything, and I'm no expert myself, but doesn't 2,000,000 people seem a bit... thin for an entire country (Aundair)? Breland's got 3,700,000, Darguun has a mere 800,000 (and has a population consisting primarily of a race known for spreading like wildfire), and even Karrnath has a rather meek population.

And looking at the continent itself, it's 10 times the size of Australia. Khorvaire's demographics just don't seem to add up. I get the war was devastating, but a country that big should not have a population that small. Given that kind of an error, I think it is safe to assume other continents have a similar problem.

What kind of adjustment should be made to rectify this?

Those numbers aren't really that far off. This blog is a good resource for various topics on a Medieval-influenced kingdom, including population, trade, cities, etc drawing information from historical influences:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm

As you can see in its example kingdom, a stable island kingdom with good climate and fertile lands, it can expect to have about 6.6 million people. ( http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.asp ) Going off of other historical data, kingdoms tended to be anywhere from 2 to 10 million people depending upon the area and the circumstances. Wars, plagues, etc could easily cut that number drastically.

Thus, for a war-torn continent and accounting for plagues, starvation from pillaging farms and disrupting trade, etc ranging between 2 and 4 million people per kingdom isn't a huge departure from reality. As a DM you could, of course, increase these numbers if you wanted to - but the base isn't really that far off from historical precedent.

[sonofzeal]

Last time this topic came around, I posted the following:


Eberron actually got a bit borked up with distances. Apparently there was Executive Meddling at the last minute, and it resulted in some figures being off by an order of magnitude.


Here's my recommendations:

- Double the speed of Lightning Rails.

AND EITHER....
- Quarter all distances
OR
- Halve all distances
- Halve all transportation prices.
- Give 4x population to every region

Aundair has 3.57 people per square mile. Breland has 2.06 people per square mile. Modern Scotland, by contrast, has 168.2 people per square mile. And Scotland's pretty sparse as far as these things go. The country I'm currently in has 1,271 people per square mile

Airship from Sharn to Korranberg is 937 gp, and takes 46 hours. By Lightning Rail, that's 1233.5 gp, and 3 1/2 days.

Like I said, I have it on good authority that last-minute Executive Meddling bolloxed-up the distance figures, which magnified transportation costs and decimated population density. The rules of thumb I proposed above bring it back around where it was intended to be, give or take.

[Emperor Tippy]

It's a D&D world. They are all death worlds of the highest order.

Even the smallest villages need twenty foot high walls with cleared fields of fire and a defense force of 20-30 people just so that the local wildlife doesn't kill them all.

Look at the Allip. A single one, a CR 3 threat, could wipe out an entire village in a night. God help them if someone commits suicide.

Ankhegs, Assassin Vines, Cockatrice, Deero, Deinonychus, Dire Wolves, Dryads, Ethereal Marauders, Ettercap's, Giant Wasps, and dozens of other CR 1-3 creatures are dirt common.

[Big Fau]

Last time this topic came around, I posted the following:

Thank you for that. Now, one further question: How would that affect RHoD's timeframe?

[Eldan]

Very much too low, probably, even assuming just middle age technology, which Eberron is far beyond.

England, which is pretty tiny compared to any part of Khorvaire, had between a million (around year 1100) and 5-7 million (around 1350). That's without create food and water, cure spells, remove disease, magewrights and warforged who don't need any resources.

[GoatBoy]

Judging Eberron by modern population figures is also not a fair comparison. World population has increased by a factor of ten in the past 3 centuries. Yeah, Eberron's numbers are rather low, but make sure we have the right perspective.

http://www.roebuckclasses.com/105/images/sasia/humans1.jpg

[Emperor Tippy]

And the real world was not populated by tons of creatures that could casually and singlehandedly depopulate entire towns in a night. That any civilization survives in any D&D world is frankly amazing.

[Golden Ladybug]

Well, Eberron has just come out of a War that has been going on for over a century. With that in mind, I do not find it at all surprising that their population is quite low. After all, not having enough troops to fight in the Hundred Year War was the motivation for creating the Warforged. Since the default date is 998K, its only been two years since the War ended, and it was a big war.

The Day of Mourning would have also taken out a huge chunk of lives. The entire nation of Cyre was turned into a huge mist filled wasteland four years ago, and the vast majority of its citizenry went with it.

And, as Tippy brought up, the World is full to the brim of dangerous creatures. Being a normal human being is a scary prospect in any D&D setting, and Eberron is no exception. You might not have the normal issue of marauding Orcs and Goblins (as both Orcs and Goblins are fairly nice people in Eberron), but theres still a lot of scary creatures that'll eat you without much provocation. Hell, for someone living near the Talenta Plains, there is constant danger of being eaten by wild dinosaurs!

So yeah, I don't find it too surprising that the population is so small. I'm sure if we looked at the population of Khorvaire in ten years time, it would be starting to bounce back, but at this point in its history, these population values make sense to me.

[DeusMortuusEst]

It might also be worth noting that Sweden has a population density of 58,7 people/mile2, Norway 41,3 and Finland 45,6, so while Khorvaire's numbers are small for a modern country, they're not that small when we factor in the war, the lower standards and the natural hazards.

[sonofzeal]

Khorvair is not actually that dangerous, especially not in the Five Kingdoms. Even the "monsters" are by and large civilized, in Droaam among other places. Your average farmer doesn't have that much to fear beyond normal real-world concerns like mundane bandits, oppressive lords, and an occasional spot of disease.

As for the Last War, a lot of it was fought between robots and skeletons, and various other tools to reduce human casualties.

There were still loads of human casualties to be sure, but let's be honest about the scale here. Breland has the population density of Siberia. The listed numbers aren't just "low", they're "apocalyptic". Even by the standards of a medieval societies (which Khorvair definitely has notable advantages over), even coming out of a major war, the numbers are just completely ridiculous.

This is Breland
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/3543/122723_CN_GL.jpg

This is Siberia
http://www.sabotagetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/Siberia-sz000_1268.jpg

Which should have higher population density?

[kpenguin]

The problem with Eberron is not so much population by nation, which I think is all fairly reasonable. The problem is population density, population compared to square mileage.

The root is the scale of the landmasses, in my estimation. Eberron is roughly earth-sized, but it has far more land and far less ocean. Khorvaire, the smallest continent in Eberron, is a bit larger than Eurasia. Factor in that Khorvaire has relatively few states in comparison and you've got quite a lot of area per region.

Tippy makes a good point about how dangerous a D&D world is, but that makes me question how these nations got so large in the first place. If that were the limiting factor on population, it'd be a limiting factor on migration as well and you'd get something more like Points of Light than the more modern-ish nation states of Eberron.

[Solaris]

Khorvair is not actually that dangerous, especially not in the Five Kingdoms. Even the "monsters" are by and large civilized, in Droaam among other places. Your average farmer doesn't have that much to fear beyond normal real-world concerns like mundane bandits, oppressive lords, and an occasional spot of disease.

As for the Last War, a lot of it was fought between robots and skeletons, and various other tools to reduce human casualties.

There were still loads of human casualties to be sure, but let's be honest about the scale here. Breland has the population density of Siberia. The listed numbers aren't just "low", they're "apocalyptic". Even by the standards of a medieval societies (which Khorvair definitely has notable advantages over), even coming out of a major war, the numbers are just completely ridiculous.

This is Breland
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/3543/122723_CN_GL.jpg

This is Siberia
http://www.sabotagetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/Siberia-sz000_1268.jpg

Which should have higher population density?

The warforged were only in for the last thirty years of it - in part because they were running out of troops.

It was a hundred years of fairly high-intensity war. I'd say apocalyptic is a pretty good way to describe it. We do, of course, have the writers coming in to say that the numbers are pretty off.

[kpenguin]

A full century of high intensity warfare would indeed be apocalyptic. However, everything I've read of Eberron doesn't suggest to me that post-Last War Khorvaire is a post-apocalyptic setting in the usual sense, though it is certainly recovering from the Last War. Indeed, the descriptions of each of the nations makes me feel that they're each less wartorn than a lot real world nations after the world wars (but less about that, since we're treading towards politics). Its only been four years since the Mourning, and two years since peace was formally declared, and things seem to have reached normalcy quite quickly.

We don't see the breakdown of systems, etc. that I think we would see from the mass depopulation that would occur to have the population density we have in the nations of Khorvaire or, really, would realistically happen if the Last War were really 100 years of constant intense warfare. Cyre might be gone, but that's not an outcome of mass depopulation. Same with the breaking off of the various smaller nations from the Five Nations.

[shadow_archmagi]

Medieval France tops the list, with a 14th-century density upwards of 100 people/sq. mile.




As you can see in its example kingdom, a stable island kingdom with good climate and fertile lands, it can expect to have about 6.6 million people.


According to that blog, the example kingdom is 88,700 square miles, with a population of 6,600,000, for a population density of around seventy-five people per square mile.

Thrane has an area of 500,000 square miles (Over five times as much space!) with a population of 2,300,000 (One third as many people.) and a population density of... 4.6 people per square mile.

Thus, for every hundred people you meet while traveling in Chamlek The Example Kingdom, Thrane has six. Even if the Black Plague struck while every country had a Civil War, you still couldn't expect that to kill 94% of the population. (And the land should have been near max capacity during the age of the glorious empire)

[Golden Ladybug]

This is Breland
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/3543/122723_CN_GL.jpg

This is Siberia
http://www.sabotagetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/Siberia-sz000_1268.jpg

Which should have higher population density?

...well, when you put it like that, there does seem to be a problem :smalltongue:

Looking at the maps in the ECS, I can sort of see how the population density works out the way it does, as there are very few settlements on the whole noted; in Breland, you'd need to travel ~100 miles from Sharn before you see another city or town. I'm no geographer, and I might be completely wrong about what a usual distance between towns would be in such a situation, but that seems a rather long way to me.

I'd wager this is partly what results in this population/land disparity. If the majority of the landmass is unoccupied, and the population congregates in the cities, then a misleading representation of the population density will result. There doesn't seem to be any small towns marked on the map that would dot the landscape. Compare this (http://www.itraveluk.co.uk/images/maps/england.gif) Map of England to this (http://worldoffarreach.net/eberron/Miscellaneous%20Information/Breland%20map.jpg) Map of Breland I apologise that some of the map has been cut off in the picture, but the unit of measurement used is miles, which can be confirmed by looking at the ECS
England is on a scale of 60 Miles. Breland is on 1000 Miles.

So much of Khorvaire is empty space! It is mentioned in the Life in the World section of the Eberron Campaign Setting that most of the countryside is taken up by farmland, so that could be something to consider. Dragons, Aberrations, Dinosaurs, Undead and Living Spells wandering around the place could also be something to think about. Khorvaire is in fairly good shape for a continent that has been engaged in constant warfare and is also the home of incredibly dangerous creatures, and it makes sense that much of the land is uninhabited, or used as farmland. For people to survive in a D&D world, they would need to congregate in easily defensible positions, which sort of explains this.

But there is something to be said about distances being out by a factor of ten, like tyckspoon mentioned. Or maybe D&D writers have no sense of scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)?

[Calanon]

Very much too low, probably, even assuming just middle age technology, which Eberron is far beyond.

England, which is pretty tiny compared to any part of Khorvaire, had between a million (around year 1100) and 5-7 million (around 1350). That's without create food and water, cure spells, remove disease, magewrights and warforged who don't need any resources.


Most citizens of a Khorvairian city can’t afford to have even a low-level spell cast on their behalf. The 125 gp price for remove disease, for example, puts that spell out of reach of most citizens (even those with the House Jorasco discount) and practically guarantees that disease will never be eradicated from any of Khorvaire’s nations. On the other hand, most people can afford to hop on a skycoach to travel from one end of Sharn to the other, getting a first hand experience of the incredible magic that keeps the City of Towers running. Even the poorest resident of a great city still benefits from the everbright lanterns found along major thoroughfares. As with any other services, some magical effects are easily affordable and widely available, and others are within the reach of only the wealthiest people.

Warforged should still have some level of maintenance (Even though they need it about as much as a human needs a semi-annual physical) the idea of a "perfect" world based around magic sounds pretty darn close to communism to me... Lets go ask the Russians how that worked out for them :smalltongue:

[phlidwsn]

For Keith Baker's word on the scale of Eberron, I do remember the post he made suggesting a 1/10 adjustment for a scale closer to Europe. I can't find it now, but I believe it was up at http://www.crystalmarch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=291 at one point. Sadly Wayback nor Google have a cache of it.

More recently, there's a bit from Keith at enworld from 2004 still up: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/91957-keith-baker-creator-eberron-q-thread-20.html that suggests the scale issue is deliberate to leave lots of empty room for unexplored ruins and other plot hooks wherever you need then.

[pffh]

Those number do seem low. If you want an example of a real world country that had such low numbers just look at Iceland that had around 2 people per square mile population all the way up until the last two centuries or so.

With these kind of numbers you won't get towns and certainly not cities and most people would live in close family run farms. This is evidently not how most people in Eberron live so either you need to increase the population or reduce the size of the landmass.