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

[markem]

In other words - when you make a map (like a city) - just how many of the citizens do you think about? Most maps only keep track of the major parts (like here is King Toady-Bottom's castle and over there is the Market). BUT! When you make the market - do you think about all of the merchants? Or which kinds of merchants are available? (ie: Would there be fishmongers in a desert environment? Or merchants who sell nets in the mountain city of Shish-a-loon?) This is one of those questions I ask myself because I used to keep track of every single person who lived in a city but it just got to be too much to keep track of.

If you DID keep track of them - would this not make what buildings you put on a map different? After all, someone who makes nets needs lots of space to hang the nets up so they can work on them. Or what about a fishmonder needing some place to dry his fish? Do these considerations go into your map making?

[Wingshaw]

When I design a city, I always try to think about the people who live there. The reason is simple: they are the ones who build and use the city, much more than King Toady-Bottom III. The layout of the city rarely comes from the King's decisions, but from the daily habits of the people: the walk to market, to the temple/cathedral, to the fields, etc. I wouldn't go so far as to say I keep track of every citizen; I just try to remember that the city I am designing is [theoretically] a home and workplace for [not] real people. It is also a visual thing: we fantasy cartographers usually only see our creations from above; when you walk around a city, though, you are seeing it from street level--it is the difference between GoogleMaps and GoogleStreetView.

As for different types of building and land use, this example demonstrates nicely, I think: London was historically a major exporter of wool, and so many old maps of London show tenter fields (fields where wool would be hung to dry).

So the short answer to your question: yes, definitely, and I applaud that approach.

THW

[CaptainJohnHawk]

Many many years ago (on an older account) the great and powerful Gandwarf created a tutorial on his thought process when he builds a settlement map in CC3. Now the program you use is irrelevant, however the process can be very in depth. This is the main reason I rarely make City maps. My mind gets overwhelmed with all the realism I feel like I NEED to have. The approach is this:

1.What is the main reason these people decided to settle HERE. Most likely resources if they are a new settlement (food, water , wood). Some times they settle because they see profit (being a Mid-way point between larger settlements)
2. What buildings would be built first? Most likely homes to live in, and unless the settlement was built with the intention to rapidly expand into a larger settlement, the layout would be more relaxed. Unless people are building blocks at a time, most original settlements had roads connecting their homes to the main road. The reason the village outside the city is built looser, and more spread out, and the walled city next to it is tightly packed and the street layout more practical (planned settlement).
3. What would begin to expand first? Is this a a crossroads settlement or a secluded settlement. Tavern, marketplace, larger farming areas.
4,5,6.... all of these questions will help you create a very realistically built settlement. Keep in mind some places are forced to expand, due to a larger power taking control of resources and "bullying" the area. This creates poor, ghetto areas (sometimes), etc.
Larger the settlement, the more food they will need, the more resources it takes to run, the more WATER they need to have. If there is no river, they will have wells. etc.
This is the reason I rarely finish a city map. It takes me so long to build the real true back story to a settlement.
So the answer is yes. I can't speak for everyone, but I do consider all factors that would factor in to settlement layout and creation.
Hope this helped

Cheers
Capt.JH

[waldronate]

The shortest answer goes back to the essence of a map, I think. A map is an abstraction of a place done by a person (or group) for a (frequently other) person or group and for a specific reason. If the reason doesn't include human artifacts, then who is on the map is largely irrelevant. If the map is intended for a rule to show off the wealth of the territory, then the map is likely to be detailed and to have a great amount of decorative touches. If the map is purely stylistic or artistic practice, then there are few constraints.

Worldbuilding, on the other hand, considers the who, what when, where, why, and to what extent against a geographic backdrop. In this case, maps are more likely to be secondary products that support the worldbuilding activities than anything else. The question that you started out with is more of a worldbuilding question. In that context, determining who made the map, for whom they made it, and the reason they made it will determine what goes on it (e.g. how prominent the military fortifications on a map will be is determined in large part by who will be able to access the map).

[markem]

Just want to say thanks to everyone for their replies. One of the things that gets me (sometimes) is how open most areas around a city are. Like in The Lord of the Rings - only one farmer is run in to by the hobbits when there has to be many other farmers in the area to support the cities (like Hobbiton, Bree, and so forth). I realize these farms would be fairly large because they would have cattle, pigs, horses, etc.... - but when most maps for cities are drawn - where are the farms? Again - this is a part of the "little people" question.

If you look at major cities today - there aren't farms immediately around the cities but if you go back in time they were surrounded by farms. Like the fishmongers, netters, glass blowers, alchemists, and such - farmers are very important for a city to survive. Otherwise - you have to have all food imported which is very expensive.

So like the little people IN the city - do you put the farms in which would surround a medieval city? And I'm sure there are exceptions. Like maybe elves just eat things from the forest (and there are deer in the forest but if you don't start farming the deer then they will be wiped out after a while). In the hobbit, the elves were depicted just eating greens. However, in the LotR - when feasts are held there wasn't anything saying the elves did not eat whatever meat was served and if I remember correctly, in the Silmarillion J.R.R. Tolkien said the elves would go on hunting expeditions to hunt deer. (I'm going off the deep end here. :-) )

Maybe I should have actually asked - "How much towards reality (as in a map depicting) do you go? I know everyone delineates the major points - but what about all of those tiny details and insignificant people?"

A good example of me keeping track of everyone in a town - I had a small town north of the Earth Kingdom's main city. Forty-two buildings, forty-two people, and X number of side people (ie: Husband (and wife (and kids))). I laid all of them out along with stats, likes, dislikes, what they do, where they go, where they get their items or materials to make items, and if they are involved with one of the other people in the town and how that other person felt about them. Nothing fancy (ie: No - they wear yellow on Monday, pink on Tuesday, Violet on Wednesday or they are left handed, etc... Unless it was an important topic.) but enough information so I could role play them when the characters met them. (As a side note - this is where some players met a little old lady who's husband had died and who had a house full of magical items that she was slowly but surely selling so she had money to live on. The characters bought a magical card deck, played with it, and some of the players were teleported off to other locations and adventures. The remaining two people decided to force the little old lady to tell them what had happened to their friends. In the ensuring fight they knocked over a lamp and set the house on fire. So now there is a burnt-out husk of a house where the house was and the little old lady is now a pauper.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

I was a huge fan of world building, well before I became a map enthusiast. My D&D folder on my computer is over 80gbs at this point (mostly photos of course).
I create worlds with large folder "tree" systems. So its Campaign>Story,Events,Calender,Characters,Photos,L ocations>Country>Region>Settlement, Dungeon>Wards>Buildings>People....and on. It is a huge system, but it really makes me happy to have a complete world built, that the characters interact with. Versus, making a world as the characters interact with it.

Back on topic. You are correct, most ancient cities were surrounded by farm lands and resources. However some larger market cities, wouldn't have to pay for all imports. Alot of neighboring settlements and farm lands would travel from all around to sell their goods at the large market, because they could make the greatest profit. Most city maps you see were there are no farm lands surrounding the city are usually near water. So these population would have fish be a larger part of their diet. But most city maps you see won't have farm lands directly outside the walls (they might). Some artist prefer to portray only the relevant info. So if someone were to make a map on how to navigate through a city, they most likely wouldn't go into too much detail as to what is outside the city. The historical cartographers that were documenting settlements, did include all surrounding areas.

These obviously can not be said for all maps. Some people simply forget to add farms, because they are focusing so much on what is inside the walls.

Cheers!
Capt.JH

[Midgardsormr]

The villains! It's amazing the wrack and ruin most groups of "heroes" leave behind them.

There's an excellent little article by John Ross (if I remember correctly, he used to post here under the name Ghalev, but I seem to recall that he might have changed his handle at some point) that helps to calculate approximate numbers for various craftspeople based on the population of a town. Medieval Demographics Made Easy

There are some calculators and spreadsheets linked from the bottom of the article, but it's pretty old, so those may or may not still be there. I'm sure you can find similar calculators elsewhere, though. It's a pretty popular article.

Anyway, if I'm making a medieval-type settlement, I usually start with the output of one of those calculators, adjust it for the particular economy of my town, and then roughly block out districts to accommodate all of those people. If the settlement is very small I will probably make some details of all of those people. Otherwise, it's a generalization and I don't create details until they're needed.

For quick on-the-fly generation of all of these NPCs, I like the charts from NPC Essentials by Johnn Four. I lost the book itself years ago, but I still have printouts of all of those charts that I use all the time.

[waldronate]

The things that people put on a map are the things that are important to the purpose of the map, not necessarily an objective rendition of the area in question.

The question of adding tiny details and insignificant people on a map is probably a non-question. If details aren't important to the purpose of the map, they shouldn't be on the map. If I look at a surveyor's map, I won't see how many dogs live at my neighbor's house, but I will likely observe that there is a 6-foot easement all around their property where my neighbor isn't allowed to build a structure. If I look at a hobo map of the same area, I might well see a notation that there are dogs at that house, however, as well as a notation that my neighbors is extremely hostile to strangers. Two maps, two purposes, two barely overlapping sets of information.

If someone is making maps to support worldbuilding activities, they details will be heaped on from every direction because the purpose of the map is likely to provide reference to _everything_ about the area.

Why don't more people add the sorts of details that you describe? I would hazard that it's for the same reason that we see a lot of maps with rivers behaving strangely: ignorance. The mapmaker wants a pretty picture to support an activity, but they have no idea about how any of that works, so they draw things that are familiar to them. American kid from a post-WWII suburb? That city map is probably going to have wide, well-paved curvilinear streets with zones of single-purpose detached buildings all set back nicely from the street on rectangularish lots. Inner-city kid? There will probably be fancy buildings, but likely little in the way of sewage treatment or food production systems. Far too many people today have very little practical understanding how the world works, and their attempts at mapmaking show that. Flip a switch, flush, turn a tap, walk to the corner store, then sit down and eat: that's all the understanding far too many people have of how their world works.

I should stop ranting. I probably had a purpose at one point, but I forget what it is now...

[CaptainJohnHawk]

One of my all time favorite sites that help world build is Johns D&D Utilities
It has a ton of useful tools and calculators. I do the same as Midgard. I typically start with a generated settlement, just to get a rough count of services and population. Then retool the numbers to fit the settlement you want to create.
I stay away from making entirely generated places, just because you aren't as committed, or excited about it.

[Chick]

.....I would hazard that it's for the same reason that we see a lot of maps with rivers behaving strangely: ignorance. The mapmaker wants a pretty picture to support an activity, but they have no idea about how any of that works, so they draw things that are familiar to them. American kid from a post-WWII suburb? That city map is probably going to have wide, well-paved curvilinear streets with zones of single-purpose detached buildings all set back nicely from the street on rectangularish lots. Inner-city kid? There will probably be fancy buildings, but likely little in the way of sewage treatment or food production systems. Far too many people today have very little practical understanding how the world works, and their attempts at mapmaking show that. Flip a switch, flush, turn a tap, walk to the corner store, then sit down and eat: that's all the understanding far too many people have of how their world works.

I should stop ranting. I probably had a purpose at one point, but I forget what it is now...

I don't know the purpose, and you're probably preaching to the choir here, but you certainly said it beautifully.