Hi all! I was always imagining cities as something big, crowded and time consuming to cross. (in my campaigns people spent hours and took a pricy wagon to cross the city from one corner to another when they were in a hurry 😂), but now all the distances are demystified!
I would like to posit that you didn't count the sprawling farmlands associated with any population center that would exist in DND as part of the area. I tip my hat to your work ☺️
You have done a great job with dnd lore and famous villains etc. Love this material on how big the cities are and comparison to real cities. Great job and keep the content coming!
Very good info! This helps put the cities of the sword coast in perspective. I'd be interested to see how Cormyr and maybe some of the southern cities of Faerun match up.
That actually makes sense when you think about it in medieval times cities was not as big as they are now back than it was way more common for people to live in small villages than in cities
@@texasyep Both the City of London (not to be confused with Greater London) and the Vatican are, effectively, medieval cities with borders that have existed for centuries and been absorbed into the larger metropolises around them.
As a long time world builder for game cities, I tip my hat to you, good vid. The comparison between fantasy city size and real historic cities is a good way to help people visualize. As a simple rule of thumb, 2 miles across (or what you can walk in 1 hour) is about as big as an old city could get. Beyond this you run into lots of logistical problems, the top most being how you protect it. Long walls look impressive but are a pain to guard.
This blew my mind! That is data that will affect my games forever. In all these years I never really thought to look at the scale, and just ran with what was in the imagination. Now I have to think about Menzoberranzan and Gracklstugh. Also how big is Undermountian really🤔. Thanks for getting the brain 🧠 going.. There is also no coincidence that Waterdeep is exactly the size of London.
Haha true! I ruined my imagination with this research as well 😂Now gotta think twice before taking party to a city. P.S. Its equal to the center of London, the oldest part of it. I might do a continuation of the story eventually, comparing those with old medivial cities from the past.
It’s hard to remember the actual scale, but they are actually fairly realistic. There’s a rule of thumb that humans don’t want to travel more than an hour in a day, so a city should take half an hour to cross (or to go from edge to center for huge cities). Modern cities have bicycles and motor vehicles to expand that range, but relying on animals and foot that half hour is at most 2 miles. And for related reasons the next settlement is going to be 2 hours travel away.
Thanks for including both measurements, so we don't have to look up conversion, as is often the case. I'm sure those who use the other system also thank you, lol, because either way, at least one of us would have been inconvenienced. Anyway, thanks again, and good looking out. Another like and comment for the algorithm. Best of luck.
Assuming that this is a medieval-type setting, the size of the cities should not be surprising. Most of the villages have a few dozen houses housing at most a hundred inhabitants. Going by such a village, the towns are of gigantic proportions! I personally appreciate the size chosen by Greenwood, because the towns remain human-sized and not megacities of millions. I find megacities better suited for futuristic, dystopian or cyberpunk settings. Still, good research work.
Thanks for sharing! Agree, I'll definetly compare to medieval as well. My main surprise was that you can do so much in Dnd cities (taverns, magic shops, etc) on so little space (as it turned out)!
It makes sense that the cityes are not as large than todays, but is more fun to imagine a medieval city as large and dense than for exp. Manhattan. On the wiki it says that Waterdeep had 2 million inhabitants and was a metropolis, so in my campaign I imagined Waterdeep as Manhattan with mediaval walls. A Skullord of Orcus wanted to make the city into a dread domain to ressurect his loved ones and my players had to fight through hordes of undead. Their base was the trollskull manor and every encounter was streets, alleys, indoors or sewers. The whole metropolis experience :D
so i imagine Nevrwinter and some of the slums of the other cities are more like packed in like Edinburgh's old town. You will have poor people packed into the rafters and basements of every house.
Thats what Im talking about. Everything is ultra packed if we follow the description and apply actual sizes. If not for magics, diseases and fire would do their thing pretty quick I guess.
the home town i was born in have around 8-12 thousand citizen and take around 35 minute to walk from one side to another and it is just one of the small towns of Sweden. But i realize now isn't so small in size compared to the towns of DnD only less ppl.
This is funny, because I’m currently running a campaign through the villages on Isle of Dread.. sometimes I forget, and either turn these native villages into Hong Kong’s former Kowloon, or a ghost town. I forgot some planning, mixed with common sense went into towns, villages, and cities👍👍👍
Interesting to see that. I guess thats pretty much what medieval cities would be like compared to our huge modern cities, but here is an idea now that you are tuned into cities. What about Outer Plane cities? Those may very well dwarf even our biggest modern metropolises!
It's really not that far off from historical accuracy if the cities sizes were claiming the size of the fortified city. Many of these city's would have lower class people living amongst farms on the outskirts of the cities which would sometimes be bigger than the city itself depending on how much the local population depends on what it can offer such as trade or port. Cool video
Cities got only gigantic in the real world during the last 150 Years. You almost had it when you said that Baldur's Gate fits in the inner area of AMsterdam (or the old city) So Baldur's Gate is as big as Amsterdam was at a compareable period in real world history. Not too bad.
For some reason, my previous comment was nuked I would try to ask one more time: from which sources you took population numbers for Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate? Because they're tend to change from source to source, but (AFAIK) never fit the numbers you listed (Except for Neverwinter - those are, apparently, correct)
In medieval Europe, the city of Rome's population was about 1.5 million, and Paris was around 250,000. The cities of the Sword Coast are relatively small by comparison. That being said, never trust game designers when it coms to historical accuracy, or city planning! It's best to just press the "I believe" button, and move on.
Yeah, but its disappointing. They mention so many taverns, shops, guilds, and other magic towers and shops in the cities, so now I'll imagine it more like Las Vegas with lots if signs and banners one atop of the other instead of smth what fan art shows😄
@@TellmeLore - Even major cities back then weren't that big. There just weren't that many people. The Forgotten Realms is huge, and cities are spread out. Plus, according to the lore, the planet comes close to apocalypse every couple of years!
Looking at some numbers people put together, these D&D cities kinda look like WotC may have been looking at historic places/times for city sizes and pops. The amount of industrialization, specifically number of urban dwellers that farmers can support has shot up drastically in the last ~300 years or so. There is an ancient (destroyed ~2800 years ago) walled city near where I live. It was estimated to have a while 350 residents at its height.
Rome only had one million people, cities require a considerable amount of infrastructure, infrastructure which did not exist in the past. That said, in terms of scale and perspective, it's worth pointing out that right now, today, the average _poor_ American has more living space than the average European.
@@TellmeLore Everything was hand made back then. Every shop is also a producer, and almost every family should have a storefront; or, more accurately, a stall. Small stalls stacked on top of one another as you might find at a fleamarket. Perhaps tiny stores crammed together as you might find in China Town. Asian street food videos are also a pretty good inspiration. The term "bazaar" should be helpful too, there's lots of classical art depicting them. The best way to achieve the impact you want these cities to have is variety, there shouldn't be just one blacksmith, that one guy shouldn't be able to make everything, etc., and now you still have that two hour journey, it's just no longer in a straight line. Now, it's an urban exploration, wherein you can introduce any number of pickpockets, conspiracies, allies, black markets, etc.; the tighter you pack things, the more complex travel becomes.
I did have an idea of city population is 3million different races and 4+ big walls layers around city also has the biggest economy, 8 magical schools & university and it biggest library in the worlds mutable trade roots and 4 huge markets & places & port harbour plus navy yards with a water & sewage system plus industrial zone and banking area in it to
Hi all! I was always imagining cities as something big, crowded and time consuming to cross. (in my campaigns people spent hours and took a pricy wagon to cross the city from one corner to another when they were in a hurry 😂), but now all the distances are demystified!
I would like to posit that you didn't count the sprawling farmlands associated with any population center that would exist in DND as part of the area. I tip my hat to your work ☺️
Keep making content too you're almost to 1000! Liked and subbed
You have done a great job with dnd lore and famous villains etc. Love this material on how big the cities are and comparison to real cities. Great job and keep the content coming!
Thank you! Next one is coming soon 🙂
Very good info! This helps put the cities of the sword coast in perspective. I'd be interested to see how Cormyr and maybe some of the southern cities of Faerun match up.
Good suggestion on Cormyr and south!
Cormyr is a prosperous kingdom would not be surprised if their biggest cities rivalled waterdeep
10 towns, netherese enclaves, warlock's crypt, amazing videos thanks!
Love the suggestions!!!
It makes you think how large our real life cities are. I liked the size comparisons!
Thank you!
That actually makes sense when you think about it in medieval times cities was not as big as they are now back than it was way more common for people to live in small villages than in cities
Agree, it would be nice to compare to medieval times city. Although comparing to modern cities is also interesting, thanks
@@texasyep Both the City of London (not to be confused with Greater London) and the Vatican are, effectively, medieval cities with borders that have existed for centuries and been absorbed into the larger metropolises around them.
@@charleshammond5694 true, I might do another one comparing old with old, that would give a better picture
@@texasyep aye, will do that one as well!
As a long time world builder for game cities, I tip my hat to you, good vid. The comparison between fantasy city size and real historic cities is a good way to help people visualize.
As a simple rule of thumb, 2 miles across (or what you can walk in 1 hour) is about as big as an old city could get. Beyond this you run into lots of logistical problems, the top most being how you protect it. Long walls look impressive but are a pain to guard.
This blew my mind! That is data that will affect my games forever. In all these years I never really thought to look at the scale, and just ran with what was in the imagination. Now I have to think about Menzoberranzan and Gracklstugh. Also how big is Undermountian really🤔. Thanks for getting the brain 🧠 going.. There is also no coincidence that Waterdeep is exactly the size of London.
Haha true! I ruined my imagination with this research as well 😂Now gotta think twice before taking party to a city. P.S. Its equal to the center of London, the oldest part of it. I might do a continuation of the story eventually, comparing those with old medivial cities from the past.
It’s hard to remember the actual scale, but they are actually fairly realistic. There’s a rule of thumb that humans don’t want to travel more than an hour in a day, so a city should take half an hour to cross (or to go from edge to center for huge cities). Modern cities have bicycles and motor vehicles to expand that range, but relying on animals and foot that half hour is at most 2 miles. And for related reasons the next settlement is going to be 2 hours travel away.
I absolutely love your uploads. I'd love to see more Underdark ecology? Or cities underground?
Thanks for including both measurements, so we don't have to look up conversion, as is often the case. I'm sure those who use the other system also thank you, lol, because either way, at least one of us would have been inconvenienced. Anyway, thanks again, and good looking out. Another like and comment for the algorithm. Best of luck.
Glad it was helpful!
Really well done video! Exactly what I've been looking for and wondering about, this really helps me develop my own maps for my dnd game!
Glad I could help!
i would also like to see the comparisons of, Luskan,Silverymoon,and calimport if you feel like doing them. Awesome video!
I love your content! Thank you for making this for us! 😀
You are welcome!
Assuming that this is a medieval-type setting, the size of the cities should not be surprising. Most of the villages have a few dozen houses housing at most a hundred inhabitants.
Going by such a village, the towns are of gigantic proportions!
I personally appreciate the size chosen by Greenwood, because the towns remain human-sized and not megacities of millions.
I find megacities better suited for futuristic, dystopian or cyberpunk settings.
Still, good research work.
Thanks for sharing! Agree, I'll definetly compare to medieval as well. My main surprise was that you can do so much in Dnd cities (taverns, magic shops, etc) on so little space (as it turned out)!
This is such a great and insightful video, thank you
This is awesome. Thank you for this
Glad you liked it!
It makes sense that the cityes are not as large than todays, but is more fun to imagine a medieval city as large and dense than for exp. Manhattan.
On the wiki it says that Waterdeep had 2 million inhabitants and was a metropolis, so in my campaign I imagined Waterdeep as Manhattan with mediaval walls. A Skullord of Orcus wanted to make the city into a dread domain to ressurect his loved ones and my players had to fight through hordes of undead. Their base was the trollskull manor and every encounter was streets, alleys, indoors or sewers. The whole metropolis experience :D
so i imagine Nevrwinter and some of the slums of the other cities are more like packed in like Edinburgh's old town. You will have poor people packed into the rafters and basements of every house.
Thats what Im talking about. Everything is ultra packed if we follow the description and apply actual sizes. If not for magics, diseases and fire would do their thing pretty quick I guess.
the home town i was born in have around 8-12 thousand citizen and take around 35 minute to walk from one side to another and it is just one of the small towns of Sweden. But i realize now isn't so small in size compared to the towns of DnD only less ppl.
Ive learned that us Americans build monstrously sized cities.
Haha, so true!
This is funny, because I’m currently running a campaign through the villages on Isle of Dread.. sometimes I forget, and either turn these native villages into Hong Kong’s former Kowloon, or a ghost town.
I forgot some planning, mixed with common sense went into towns, villages, and cities👍👍👍
Well, but what you definetly don't forget is an entertaining part for your party. And thats the most important after all!
@@TellmeLore true, very true👍👍
Interesting to see that. I guess thats pretty much what medieval cities would be like compared to our huge modern cities, but here is an idea now that you are tuned into cities. What about Outer Plane cities? Those may very well dwarf even our biggest modern metropolises!
Sigil exists.
I would like to hear all that there is to know about the City/Town of Ravensburg in Damara.
It's really not that far off from historical accuracy if the cities sizes were claiming the size of the fortified city. Many of these city's would have lower class people living amongst farms on the outskirts of the cities which would sometimes be bigger than the city itself depending on how much the local population depends on what it can offer such as trade or port. Cool video
Ugh why'd you have to spam all of reddits D&D pages with this. Post it once and forget about it, karma farmer
Very fun / interesting
Thank you!😃
I would like to know more about Neverwinter please.
Where did you find 130,000 for Waterdeep's population? The most recent number I found on the wizards website is 2,000,000
Cities got only gigantic in the real world during the last 150 Years. You almost had it when you said that Baldur's Gate fits in the inner area of AMsterdam (or the old city) So Baldur's Gate is as big as Amsterdam was at a compareable period in real world history. Not too bad.
For some reason, my previous comment was nuked
I would try to ask one more time: from which sources you took population numbers for Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate?
Because they're tend to change from source to source, but (AFAIK) never fit the numbers you listed (Except for Neverwinter - those are, apparently, correct)
Eh, downtown Pittsburgh is .69 square miles. I'm cool with these city sizes.
Undermountain! do Undermountain please.
In medieval Europe, the city of Rome's population was about 1.5 million, and Paris was around 250,000. The cities of the Sword Coast are relatively small by comparison. That being said, never trust game designers when it coms to historical accuracy, or city planning! It's best to just press the "I believe" button, and move on.
Yeah, but its disappointing. They mention so many taverns, shops, guilds, and other magic towers and shops in the cities, so now I'll imagine it more like Las Vegas with lots if signs and banners one atop of the other instead of smth what fan art shows😄
@@TellmeLore - Even major cities back then weren't that big. There just weren't that many people. The Forgotten Realms is huge, and cities are spread out.
Plus, according to the lore, the planet comes close to apocalypse every couple of years!
Looking at some numbers people put together, these D&D cities kinda look like WotC may have been looking at historic places/times for city sizes and pops. The amount of industrialization, specifically number of urban dwellers that farmers can support has shot up drastically in the last ~300 years or so. There is an ancient (destroyed ~2800 years ago) walled city near where I live. It was estimated to have a while 350 residents at its height.
Rome only had one million people, cities require a considerable amount of infrastructure, infrastructure which did not exist in the past. That said, in terms of scale and perspective, it's worth pointing out that right now, today, the average _poor_ American has more living space than the average European.
@@TellmeLore Everything was hand made back then. Every shop is also a producer, and almost every family should have a storefront; or, more accurately, a stall. Small stalls stacked on top of one another as you might find at a fleamarket. Perhaps tiny stores crammed together as you might find in China Town. Asian street food videos are also a pretty good inspiration. The term "bazaar" should be helpful too, there's lots of classical art depicting them. The best way to achieve the impact you want these cities to have is variety, there shouldn't be just one blacksmith, that one guy shouldn't be able to make everything, etc., and now you still have that two hour journey, it's just no longer in a straight line. Now, it's an urban exploration, wherein you can introduce any number of pickpockets, conspiracies, allies, black markets, etc.; the tighter you pack things, the more complex travel becomes.
sorry, I'm American, I will need a football field, a school bus or a banana for scale...lol!
haha, thats gonna be lots of bananas
Ёр рашн из ауфл. ☺️
OK then, how many Ravenloft Castles would fit into Putin's Palace😁?
Fantasy is fiction is fantasy.
Unless you are running an historical campaign, forget about it and move on.
I did have an idea of city population is 3million different races and 4+ big walls layers around city also has the biggest economy, 8 magical schools & university and it biggest library in the worlds mutable trade roots and 4 huge markets & places & port harbour plus navy yards with a water & sewage system plus industrial zone and banking area in it to
Yes, in one source they say Waterdeep had 1m+. But its not just city itself, but outer areas counted as I understood.
@@TellmeLore kind of Tokyo and greater Tokyo with it link cities also thank you