When you make a map - do you think about the little people?

[Justin Braddy]

Hi just flicking through a few threads and posting my 5 replies so I can start messaging. Interesting and exciting stuff.

[Larb]

I prefer to think about the little people. I love fantasy but I find "epic" fantasy can often feel a bit boring - yet another hero to save the world or save the day and defeat the ultimate evil. Or something like that. I much rather reading about the struggles of normal people within a fantasy context.

For example a bunch of maps and drawings I did recently were about an apprentice alchemist who lives in an insula-like apartment building. So I sketched the building and mapped it out before sketching the character with some of her possessions and writing about her. From a world building perspective I find those sorts of things more useful because you end up dealing with the day to day stuff such people will see and do. What they will wear, what they eat, where they get their water, how buying things works, etc etc. I could go on!

It is also why I prefer making town maps to regional ones - because they feel a bit more intimate.

[Justin Braddy]

My map idea is about real world places in fantasy style where the traveller is the hero.

[Gamerprinter]

It depends on the population of a given city, whether I think about every possible individual merchant. When designing town maps with populations of only a few thousand, I am much more conscious of specific merchants, crafters and other specific members of the population. However, I created a hand-drawn city map for Paizo Publishing The Empty Throne moduie of the Jade Regent Adventure Path, and that city is supposed to have 180,000 people - if I'd spent the time thinking about every small merchant, I'd go insane in the attempt.

When I did that map, after every 100 or so shop/home buildings I created, I'd pause to see where the best place to throw in a market square, a cemetery, a temple/shrine, and possibly a small fortress or tower. Considering I ended up with over 8500 shop/home buildings, there ended up being dozens of markets, cemeteries, temple/shrines and other structures of greater import. So in a way, I am thinking about precincts and how each slightly differ from the other - thus I'm accomodating for a specific local population. I also thought about social class as I was creating that city, as some areas are homes to samurai, some are homes civic leaders, some are more dedicated to a specific temple area, as opposed to the smaller temple/shrines created with the rest of the city. Even ghetto areas were included that were more closely spaced with smaller hovel structures than elsewhere in the city.

When creating smaller town maps, sometimes I go as far as creating a fairly complete gazetteer ahead of time, at least a list of specific shops and structures I want to include - which I'll refer to as I design the map to insure I don't miss one of my intended specific structures.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

That is a great input. I agree with Gamerprinter. The larger the population, the more insane you get as you try to create it realistically. With all my settlements, I will take the total population number. Find out how many shops and special buildings and areas I need to build, and then average out how many people would live inside one house (or if that house is multiple stories, etc.) That normally cuts my work load down a lot, so I can manage these large populations. With crazy large cities, I assume the average building has 6 to 8 people living in it. Some can have a big population, and you can also include a prison or jail in your city, and make "X amount" of the population inside that building, or 80% of guards live in the barracks, etc. That really helps me limit my building amount to draw, while still giving it a crowded "full" city feel.

[markem]

First - WOW. Love the links everyone! :-)

I do kind-of agree with Gameprinter. However, when I was still playing D&D with my friends from NASA. (I no longer do only because I now work all the way across Houston from them and I just can't see driving like a nutcase to reach a D&D game. Even if it was a very nice game.) Anyway - one of the people who referee'd played Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser fantasy game. Of course the main city was Lankhmar. He had mapped out where every single person who lived in the city was located. Of course there were a lot of people coming into and leaving the city (basically travellers) but the citizens were all known. He also had been playing this same game for over twenty years. So he had had a lot of time to organize everything. When he was going to referee - he brough six boxes of notebooks of notes. He also talked of putting it all into PowerPoint. I'm thinking Viewing Dale would be a better program to use for all of his maps. But truthfully - I really do not know of any program that can do everything you need to be able to do to run as detailed of a game as this person had.

The closest program I ever saw that handled everything for D&D was written by a friend named Bill Molehaussien (apologies if I've mucked up how to spell his last name - it has been over twenty years since I last saw him). On an Apple ][+ he wrote a program that kept track of his entire world. It was mainly a text based program but used lo-res graphics to depict where everything was (including monsters and other things like travelling merchants). The program was horribly slow but it kept track of somewhere around 100,000 NPCs as well as everyone who was playing in the game. (I never played but I did talk to Bill and some of the players in his game and I did get to watch him run the program.) For an Apple ][+ with floppy drives (the original 5.25" floppies and later the 3.5" 800K floppy disk drives) it was an amazing program which kept track of a lot of information.

So to recap what everyone is saying - it isn't realistic to try to detail every last person in a large town. More realistic to do so for a small town and some large towns might not have such things as farms nearby. However, although it is true you may not have farms - but you will always have some kind of group who supports the larger towns/cities. A sea port would have some kind of merchant ships. So should you keep track of all of them? I should hate to think that all of the captain's names are Bob with a first mate called Jim. Again - it probably comes down to how many ships we are talking about. Like looking at grass. If you are up close you can see the individual leaves of grass but from far away you just see green. (Or possibly some brown and some green.) Do all of the ships do the same thing? Like a set of robots? Or are they individual? So on a map - would you draw each of the differently? Or would they be the same? I'm sure some of the would be the same (such as a fleet of ships). But history tells us that most ships that are hand made (and not robotically created) were individual. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were all different. They were similar - but they also were different.

This brings to mind a story about a shipwright. I forget which king it was but A king had commissioned the creation of a set of ships with a main one for him. His ship was almost done and looked beautiful. Then, one day, the king came down to the work area and the ship had been mutilated so that where once a beautiful, smooth curve had been - it was an ugly mess. The king flew into a rage and offered a reward of a hundred gold pieces if the person who had done this was found. About that time the master shipwright walked up and listened to the king's tantrum. "I did it," he said. The king turned on him and began screaming at him asking him why he had destroyed such a beautiful thing. The shipwright said "Do I get the reward? After all, I did find out who had done this." The king just about had a heart attack as his face turned bright red and the veins stuck out on both his head and neck. "Yes!" he said, "But you also are going to be put to death for doing this!" The shipwright just shrugged, picked up his axe, went over to the ship, did a couple whacks, and the ship was transformed into something even more beautiful than before. The king was awestruck. "You really should let me finish my work before getting upset about what I am doing," the shipwright said. The king deflated like a stuck balloon. He handed over the money and went back to his castle. The shipwright lived a long life making more ships for the king who never came to watch him making ships again. :-) Now - what was the shipwright's name?

[waldronate]

That story about the shipwright sounds suspiciously like [customer] poking his nose into [technician]'s work with no knowledge of the technical aspects of the situation. Or, in short, just about every commissioned work, ever...

And it wouldn't be a Pokémon Center without Nurse Joy or crime fighting without Officer Jenny...

[Gamerprinter]

First - WOW. Love the links everyone! :-)

Well then, here's a link to my City of Kasai map, the 180,000 population hand-drawn map I described in my post above. Here's a link to that map in the Finished Map Forum, City of Kasai.

[markem]

I >DO< want to emphasis that the story is NOT meant to insult. It just popped into my head at that particular point when I was typing. Which happens sometimes. Actually, a lot. Most times I just try to ignore what my subconscious presents to me but occasionally I think maybe someone might like the story. I especially like the Aesop fables. But used to read lots of fantasy stories from the Greek age. Like this riddle from the book on Aristotle I once read:

A bird that was not a bird, sat in a tree that was not a tree, so I picked up a stone that was not a stone, and threw it at the bird and killed it.

What are all of the things? (Well - I would never figure this out - but the answer is: A bat hung from a reed so I picked up a lava stone and threw it at the bat and killed it. Yeah - I'm sure if I were give a few hundred years I'd figure that one out.)

By the way - thanks Gameprinter. It is a beautiful map and yes - I'd go insane trying to come up with everyone who lived there. :-)

Ok - something just popped into my head: How long, if you did do every single building, do you think it would take to come up with someone for every single building? Giving that only one(1) person lives in each building. (Which is not realistic but there are so many buildings on that map.) Four or five years?

[Wingshaw]

Do all of the ships do the same thing? Like a set of robots? Or are they individual? So on a map - would you draw each of the differently? Or would they be the same? I'm sure some of the would be the same (such as a fleet of ships). But history tells us that most ships that are hand made (and not robotically created) were individual. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were all different. They were similar - but they also were different.

My understanding of ships is that you have certain general designs to a ship (galleon, frigate, barque, etc.) which share common characteristics (eg. number of masts, number of sails per mast, size/shape of keel etc.), but that there will always be variations. Sometimes those variations are functional (eg. making a taller mast or a wider hull) and are experiments in trying to make something more efficient, or result from simple expediency. As for the operations of a ship, I expect those are much more constant: a trading ship has a particular mission (earn profit) and so does everything in pursuit of that mission (visit multiple towns, store cargo, sail into docks etc.), and will have daily activities based on that mission (eg. no need for soldiers to drill on deck).

So to recap what everyone is saying - it isn't realistic to try to detail every last person in a large town. More realistic to do so for a small town and some large towns might not have such things as farms nearby. However, although it is true you may not have farms - but you will always have some kind of group who supports the larger towns/cities. A sea port would have some kind of merchant ships.

How much you want to keep track of really comes down to how much time and patience you have as a worldbuilder. As somebody who likes to make 'realistic' maps, what I aspire to is possessing sufficient knowledge of a subject that I can invent my world (whether it is a city, a village, a nation, or a planet) so that it remains logically consistent. When it comes to cities, this is easy for me (I have a degree in urban planning, another in archaeology, and I have researched urban history for more than a decade now); when it comes to geography, it is a little more difficult, but still follows basic rules.

Following from the above point, there are some things that a city just has to have: a food supply, a water source, building materials, etc. There are also some patterns that are (more or less) constant: finite availability of land, laziness, desire for protection from hostile forces, a person's inclination to material gain and willingness to exploit others to gain it. From these patterns and more, you can create a realistic city without needing to worry too much about knowing each person.

Here's another thing to bear in mind (my mind is going all over the place today): a city does not simply spring into existence. If you make a map of a city, it may be, say, 600 years after it was founded. The people who are in it today have had only a small impact on deciding how it will look and function. Are you going to invent every single person in the city that has ever existed? The dead, the vast number of immigrants into the city, and the (usually) smaller number who left? In a real city, if you were to take a census of everyone living in it, some of the people you include on the first day will probably be dead or gone by the time the census is completed; others will have arrived halfway through.

Now, it may be fun to point at a building on your city map and be able to say 'that's where John Goatface lives with his wife, two daughters and four apprentices; he is a tailor and owns a workshop in building X; he is 45 years old; his father was born 63 years ago in building Y and died two years ago; his mother was born in country Z 59 years ago and moved to the city 52 years ago; etc.'. Is all that relevant? Probably not. Is it interesting? Usually, no (most people in medieval times had biographies that were nearly identical to each other, and to their parents, and their grandparents etc.). And then, on top of that, you'll need to include the same amount of info for the wife, daughters, apprentices etc. (it is a misconception to think that women played only a small role in medieval cities; they were often very important in the daily running of a town and household). To me it just seems a bit OCD.

I'm gonna shut up now. That rambled all over the place, and I don't know how much of it was actually relevant or useful.

THW