Café de Nuit

Going through my worldbuilding resources, I found Ray Winninger's amazing article "Countrycraft" in Dragon 293 and wondered how much work we'd have to do to get country stats on all the Ravenloft domains. Anyone else read the article and interested in working on it?

I'm not home this wekk so can't check the article.

What is there basically to do? What is statted?

Joël

Well, it all starts with finding out the types of terrain in a given country. From the number of square miles of each terrain, you figure out what kind of population and natural resources the realm can support. Then you add the roads between countries for trade and economic stats and calculate the level of taxation, "discontent," and survival skill for the populace.

Man, this would be a complete overhaul of the RL maps--the terrain types alone are measured in 10mile x 10mile squares, so most domains using the RAW would not even register. Then again, when we were done, we'd have realistic population and economic stats for the Core! Yay!

Any chance of finding an online version of the article? It sounds like we'd have to work backwards - take the estimated populations of a given domain, then extrapolate how much land we'd need to support them. Arable land, at that. Eek.

Irving the Meek wrote:Any chance of finding an online version of the article?

I've looked, but never found anything.

It sounds like we'd have to work backwards - take the estimated populations of a given domain, then extrapolate how much land we'd need to support them. Arable land, at that. Eek.

I don't think that would work, because we've already seen many instances where the given numbers are way off. I'd much prefer to scrap the populations entirely, come up with a scale, figure out the terrain types, and calculate new populations from there.

Perhaps better than an online version of the article: an XL file of the realm stat sheet, dug up out of my hard drive! Anyone want a copy?

Sure!

Just sent you an invite via google docs. If I could web-publish it, I'd post a link, but oh well.

Me too! Me too!

Part of the article has been summarized on http://s2.invisionfree.com/Valedavon/in ... owtopic=22

So the next step would be to decide upon a scale for the map. I know this is a grumbling point for lots of people, but I'm definitely a large-scale person. Winninger's article says the rules there work best for an area about the size of a regular wilderness map, about 22,500 sq. miles, but IMO they are perfectly good guidelines for larger areas, if you keep your numbers straight.

In the interests of fairness, though, it's easy to start with the DoD scale and let people multiply as they see fit from there. According to DoD, the domain of Forlorn occupies about 100 square miles, equivalent to one 10x10 square. Depending if you want to call that square "forest" or "swamp," it can support as high as 7000 inhabitants and as low as 1000. I'll split the difference and call it a jungle; Forlorn's bizarre flora and fauna reflect the untamed richness of the Amazon, even if it's in a temperate climate.

Calling it jungle gives us the ability to support a population of 3000, which is actually in keeping with Gaz1...if you believe that the domain is over two-thirds max population, which I don't. As I understand it, Forlorn should be less than a quarter max. Moreover, I wouldn't mind expanding the population a little. So here's where we need to make our own decisions as individual DM's.

If you double the scale of the DoD map, you quadruple the number of 10x10 squares, and thereby quadruple everything that comes with them. That would put the population cap at 12,000, which would mean Forlorn's current population about one-sixth of what it could be in optimum circumstances. That sounds about right to me, but I'd like to see Forlorn bigger, so I'm prepared to keep going an increase the population as I need to.

Many people have multiplied the scale of the DoD map by five, which would expand things even further. This would mean that Forlorn contains approximately 25 squares the size of the DoD domain, each of which can accomodate the original 3000 max pop. for a total of 75,000 max pop. The current population would be less than a thirtieth this max. This would reduce the likelihood of random encounters so much as to make Forlorn easily traversible, except for the foliage. Those interested in increasing the population, like I am, might double or even quadruple the existing numbers while keeping the chance of encounters low. To keep the 1/6 ratio from the previous attempt, you'd have to multiply the canon stats by 5.

Finally, if you multiply the DoD map by 10, Forlorn would be 100 times its DoD size, with a max pop of 300,000. Unless you multiply the canon stats by something over 20, S would probably never have encountered any goblyns, nor the goblyns found any druids.