Square Area of A World

[Erts]

In your average DND World, how big do you think it should be? In square miles?

[Grumman]

You'd be better off thinking in terms of distance, not area.

When working out how far a civilisation reaches, it might help to remember that you can travel 25 miles per day on foot, 50 miles per day on a fast horse or a sailing ship, and 100 miles per day on a galley.

[drengnikrafe]

Are exacts really necessary? I feel like details like that are maybe better left ignored unless you're building a really massive world and want every single detail. At the point you're doing that, you need to ask yourself about distances between settlements. I feel like a smaller world would have cities a lot closer to each other, whereas bigger ones would have some near each other, and some really far away, not to mention large areas of untamed land.

[Sir_Elderberry]

Earth's radius = ~6.38 x 10^6 m
Surface area of a sphere: 4 * pi * r * r = 4 * pi * (6.38x 10^6)^2 = 5.11506576 × 10^14 square meters.

So.

[Hague]

Meters? Good sir, how many "squares" is that?

[Thajocoth]

It should be flexible. It gives the DM more room to work with. So never give a number.

[Sir_Elderberry]

Meters? Good sir, how many "squares" is that?

Don't European printings of D&D use 1m x 1m squares? I'm just being cosmopolitan here. Alternately, I am playing Dark Heresy.

[Mando Knight]

Don't European printings of D&D use 1m x 1m squares? I'm just being cosmopolitan here. Alternately, I am playing Dark Heresy.

The math comes out better between the Imperial and Metric systems if you use roughly 1.5 to 1.7 m on a side.

Also, the surface area of the Earth is not that of a perfect sphere. Throw in the irregularity of the surface and you're off by several thousand square kilometers.

[Sir_Elderberry]

Well, obviously it isn't intended to be exact. That's just a number you could toss onto an Earth-sized planet and be in the same ballpark. Being off by a few million square meters isn't that big of a deal when it comes out to 500 trillion square meters.

[Ilmryn]

Don't European printings of D&D use 1m x 1m squares? I'm just being cosmopolitan here. Alternately, I am playing Dark Heresy.

That would be convenient, but it would drastically reduce distances, since 1m is equivalent to 3ft, not 5. It is easier to work with the feet used in dnd, even though feet are annoying and impractical. Feet were made to walk on, not for measurement.
GURPS is easier; it uses yards, which easily convert into meters.

[KillianHawkeye]

Don't European printings of D&D use 1m x 1m squares? I'm just being cosmopolitan here. Alternately, I am playing Dark Heresy.

I don't know about D&D in Europe, but the most recent version of the Star Wars RPG uses a 1.5m x 1.5m square size. I'm not sure how that's relevant considering the OP asked for the surface area in square miles, not in D&D squares (or anything meters).

[Knaight]

Plus, you might want a smaller world anyways. An entire campaign could be on a small archipelago after all.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Plus, you might want a smaller world anyways. An entire campaign could be on a small archipelago after all.

If you're entire campaign is on a small archipelago, does it really matter if anything else exists beyond it? I mean, if the campaign ends, for all intents and purposes, that was the world. However, if the campaign eventually extends beyond that, it may be useful to have it be roughly Earth-sized.

[Curmudgeon]

Feet were made to walk on, not for measurement.

You do realize that the common way of measuring small distances was heel-to-toe of the booted foot, right?

[Frosty]

This knowledge would come in handy if someone wanted to plan for a dragon with Enlarge Breath to try to torch the planet...

[Greenish]

Also, the surface area of the Earth is not that of a perfect sphere.

Earth isn't a perfect sphere, it's compressed on the poles, and the northern hemisphere is also pressed down by the weights of several heavy land-masses.

You do realize that the common way of measuring small distances was heel-to-toe of the booted foot, right?

Common way to test whether someone practices witchcraft was to see if they float. Common doesn't mean practical.

[Snake-Aes]

Don't European printings of D&D use 1m x 1m squares? I'm just being cosmopolitan here. Alternately, I am playing Dark Heresy.

Here we use 1,5m squares, analog to the 5-foot squares. It's roughly the same thing.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

The answer is. As big as it needs to be. . . my world maps tend to be organic and grow. . . I'll start within a country or region, sometimes within a single valley. . . and as the party grows so does the map. . .

very rarely i will design an entire world map ahead of time, but that is usually ONLY for games that i expect will have high levels of long distance travel. In those cases i usually go with wither a series of islands that can be however big i feel like making them, or a pangea usually between 3000 and 5000 miles across with a northern pole to southern tropics, in the 5000-7000 mile range, leaving an ocean expanse on all sides to avoid the specifics of planetary size and leave it open for me to bring in exotic outside peoples if i run out of material.

we're looking at an average of 26,400,000,000 squares of primary surface landmass. . .that's not including oceans, underdarks, mountain ranges, or additional islands or continents.

[Knaight]

If you're entire campaign is on a small archipelago, does it really matter if anything else exists beyond it? I mean, if the campaign ends, for all intents and purposes, that was the world. However, if the campaign eventually extends beyond that, it may be useful to have it be roughly Earth-sized.

It matters if we see people from elsewhere coming onto said archipelago, or even if we see other influences from a mainland or some sort. But yeah, the specific size doesn't matter, and the archipelago might as well be the world, and you might have something as small as 250,000 square miles.

[Curmudgeon]

Common way to test whether someone practices witchcraft was to see if they float. Common doesn't mean practical.

Seems pretty practical to me. Can you point out even a single witch who doesn't float? Chock one up for historical effectiveness!

[KillianHawkeye]

Seems pretty practical to me. Can you point out even a single witch who doesn't float? Chock one up for historical effectiveness!

I think the problem arises from the inability to discern between witches who float and normal people who also happen to float.

[Erts]

Okay, to rephrase this...
How large do you find a typical adventure/campaign world usually span?

Does anyone have any good links to homebrewed campaigns?

[sofawall]

it uses yards, which easily convert into meters.

How the heck are yards easy to turn into meters?

Okay, to rephrase this...
How large do you find a typical adventure/campaign world usually span?

Well, there is no "typical" adventure/campaign. Red Hand of Doom, for example, is a much larger geographical area than Tomb of Horrors, for example. Also, do the PCs have reliable access to horses? Flying mounts? Airships? Are they going to sail to Xen'drik? Or is it just killing a Calzone Golem in a small town?

Impossible question is impossible.

[Grumman]

How the heck are yards easy to turn into meters?

1 yard ≈ 1 metre.

[sofawall]

1 yard ≈ 1 metre.

Yeah, for extremely short distances. But then, you might as well say 3 feet is approximately 1 meter.

I mean, Fireball diameter is about 12.2 meters. If 3 ft. are treated as a meter, that goes up by over a meter. And that's just diameter, not range (which is 600 ft.+).

[Ormur]

I decided to make roughly sketch up the size of the world my campaign takes place in.

At first I only made a small continent. It's about 2000 kilometres from end to end and top to bottom, so about the same size as Europe west of Russia if it were more compressed. I find that according to the travelling times given in the Player's handbook it takes less time to travel than it historically did in pre-18th century Europe. The centre of the continent is a 1200 kilometre river plain and it only takes them a little more than a week going end to end by traditional means. Mountains and areas without roads and navigable rivers make travel in the rest of the continent harder. I really don't expect them to travel outside of the continent much because all the relevant action I've planned is within it.

But just in case I drew the whole planet. The continent I made has too much climate variation from north to south compared to Earth. Therefore the planet is a bit smaller than Earth with approximately 200 million square kilometres of surface area, of of which oceans are a similar percentage. Then it's also easier to draw. The Earth is so fricking huge anyway that there's no need for all that space. My continent of 4 million square miles is plenty for an entire campaign with occasional hops to other dimensions and continents in the highest levels perhaps.

In my view, something the size of Western Europe should be enough for most campaigns if the primary focus isn't travel, it worked for Tolkein. But if the emphasis is on travel, considering D&D, you'd probably need a whole planet, not mention an entire cosmology with multiple planes.