Help with Worldbuilding

[Eradis]

So I started new ways to create a new world, mainly using dice. Although I have trouble with making hamlets, villages, towns and cities. I can find tables with approximate population, but I still haven't find anything that satisfy me on how many building there should be for a settlement of X populations. How many houses should there be? How many shops? If you have any references on such things, I would gladly take a look into it as I am very motivated to build a region, including mapping some of its towns.

Thanks a lot!

[Wuzza]

Don't go too far with it.

Think more about areas than actual buildings, then have a list/random table that you can use to flesh out the area. Merchant area, Noble residence, Slums etc.

They want to find a tavern? The Horny Goblin can be anywhere. Buy some gear? Ditto. Bilbos' Emporium.

Your players will probably discover 10% of what you come up with if you go full, detailed town.

[Eradis]

Don't go too far with it.

Think more about areas than actual buildings, then have a list/random table that you can use to flesh out the area. Merchant area, Noble residence, Slums etc.

They want to find a tavern? The Horny Goblin can be anywhere. Buy some gear? Ditto. Bilbos' Emporium.

Your players will probably discover 10% of what you come up with if you go full, detailed town.

I usually don't go this far. It's for a specific project I have in mind. Normally for the more "detailed" settlements that I use in my games, I have a list of the specifics building I want (story oriented mostly), and tables for the rest. I don't even use maps. I really am looking for creating at least one complete map of a town. I know it is tedious work and will most likely never be used in a game, but it is something I want to do. Which is why I need to know an approximate number of households a town should have and the number of shops to go with it. Industries on top of that would be great, but I could manage that last part realistically enough to fit my need.

[Unoriginal]

Try googling "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S. John Ross.

Also those sites, based on the above article:

http://qzil.com/kingdom/

https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

[JoeJ]

One useful rule of thumb I use is to have roughly one house per five people. This assumes that people generally have lots of children, but there are some people who don't have children at all, or even necessarily a partner (some of these, of course, will be older people who have outlived their partner). And those people who do have lots of children aren't necessarily living with all of them at any given moment, because children do grow up.

[Eradis]

Try googling "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S. John Ross.

Also those sites, based on the above article:

http://qzil.com/kingdom/

https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

Great sources, thank you! The second link is especially useful to my project.


One useful rule of thumb I use is to have roughly one house per five people. This assumes that people generally have lots of children, but there are some people who don't have children at all, or even necessarily a partner (some of these, of course, will be older people who have outlived their partner). And those people who do have lots of children aren't necessarily living with all of them at any given moment, because children do grow up.

Good idea to average it to about 5 people per household. Might differ of course for more special structures such as barracks or castles, but for the commons, this is a gem of an approximation. Thank you!



Just found this awesome map generator (https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator) too while doing some different key-word search. I believe my extended project will be shorten incredibly with everything here and in the Dungeons Master's Guide. Dice to map out the terrain and region, generator to flesh out the base of my settlements and the websites linked by Unoriginal to detail each district. Although how the districts are put in the generator will be changed to fit my specific needs.

[Throne12]

So I started new ways to create a new world, mainly using dice. Although I have trouble with making hamlets, villages, towns and cities. I can find tables with approximate population, but I still haven't find anything that satisfy me on how many building there should be for a settlement of X populations. How many houses should there be? How many shops? If you have any references on such things, I would gladly take a look into it as I am very motivated to build a region, including mapping some of its towns.

Thanks a lot!

Um what's your goal here. If you just want to draw a map draw a map. If just pick how big of a city, town, village, hamlet, community, or homestead. Then draw out the map. There so no reason to know exactly how many houses or how many people in a house hold. Draw a map that fits your mental picture or use a reference map close to the size of a population you want. Then do your own map.