Project: Economics and demography from the ground up

[Gwrthefyr]

And would have included beneftis from the Agro revolution, but once I get my hands back on it, Napoleon III had an aside on food consumption statistics in France in his socialist pamphlet Extinction du Pauperisme. While wheat consumption was roughly equal (I don't remember the units), the rich consumed about 1kg of meat daily (a sixth in the working class), usw for wine and sugar.

The old Medieval Demographics article considered a max of roughly 180 people per settled square mile*, with at most 2/3 settled (that would probably have accoutned for the density of places like Flanders) in the low Middle Ages/pre-Renaissance period.

*Thinking of it; besides the lapsus (180/acre would have been high-end urban density), for others who can't be bothered to make the conversion, that's slightly less than 70/km2

[ryancaveney]

usw

For those who don't speak German (und so weiter), that means etc (et cetera). =)

The old Medieval Demographics article considered a max of roughly 180 people per settled acre, with at most 2/3 settled (that would probably have accoutned for the density of places like Flanders) in the low Middle Ages/pre-Renaissance period.

That is an excellent article. It's part of my justification for saying "all the people are already there" when discussing province level. That is, since a BR province is 900 to 1600 square miles (pg. 33), and maximum population per province is 100,000 (pg. 34), that gives a maximum density of 63 to 111 inhabitants per square mile, right in the reasonable range for well-settled lands. Therefore, to prevent Cerilia from being massively underpopulated and to prevent the Rule action from creating people out of thin air, I (and several others) claim that all plains provinces always have about 100,000 people; whether it is considered a Level 1 or a Level 10 province is determined by how much direct control over it the owner has (how much land is in his personal demesne, or how good his local administrators are, or other social improvements).


Ryan

[dalor]

The only thing I don`t like about the people already being there is that Cerilia is a Fantasy Setting...

Why not have so few people living in an area.

Movies like Willow, The Lord of the Rings or what have you almost always portray the lands as very nearly empty and almost nearly reclaimed by nature. I think it is what lends a feeling of desperation when the heroes arrive:

With so few people clinging to their daily lives, raiding monsters take on real danger to civilization itself...but on the other hand, if there are 100,000 people in the province, then what fame are the heroes likely to gain when the impact on the province is really not all that great when a band of monsters attack a single outlying hamlet with only 100 people in it and make off with a couple of captives.

I like the sparse populations given.

As for why you are able to raise the number of people in a province, I`ve always thought of it this way:

Anuire (as an example) stays pretty much static in its population, with the various nations having ebbing and flowing populations depending on what is going on.

When the character permanently rules up a province, new settlers are coming in from all over: returning relatives come "home" to a more safe land, new craftsmen hear the area is in need of their skills, people tired of war in their own nation trickle into the safer land and etc...

Is it comparitive to our own worlds history of how things medieval work as far as population...sure is not; but it makes it feel more fantastical to me.



--- ryancaveney <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET> wrote:
>
> ------------ QUOTE ----------
> The old Medieval Demographics article considered a max of roughly 180 people per settled acre, with at most 2/3 settled (that would probably have accoutned for the density of places like Flanders) in the low Middle Ages/pre-Renaissance period.
> -----------------------------
>
> That is an excellent article. It`s part of my justification for saying "all the people are already there" when discussing province level. That is, since a BR province is 900 to 1600 square miles (pg. 33), and maximum population per province is 100,000 (pg. 34), that gives a maximum density of 63 to 111 inhabitants per square mile, right in the reasonable range for well-settled lands. Therefore, to prevent
> Cerilia from being massively underpopulated and to prevent the Rule action from creating people out of thin air, I (and several others) claim that all plains provinces always have about 100,000 people; whether it is considered a Level 1 or a Level 10 province is determined by how much direct control over it the owner has (how much land is in his personal demesne, or how good his local administrators are, or other social improvements).
>
> Ryan

[Jaleela]

The real problem with the sparse populations given is that they could not possibly support the towns listed in the domain sourcebook. People need food, and you need 80 to 90 people growing food to support every 10 people who are not farmers. You just can't get away from that fact of life in an agrarian society.

I don't agree with having a level 1 province haveing 100,000 living in it in a plains state, but for every town you have of a couple of thousand people, you need to have , say, 20 or 30 large villages and a number of hamlets planting crops to support the town.

Since most Cerilian heros are regents of one form or other, or are blooded, your concern regarding them going unoticed is unfouded, in my opinion. Remember, to a population with a large number of farmers, a few people that do drive off mosters attacking them most assuredly will be noticed and become famous. You just don't have that many adventurers in an agrarian society, so the ones you have will be noticed - assuming they do heroic things, and aren't the typical self-centerd D&D heros only concerned with amassing personal wealth, and using henchmen as human shields.

[kgauck]

Also keep in mind that full of medieval people is pretty empty. Modern populations are as much as ten times higher than medieval figures. Admittedly Italy and France had much larger medieval populations. Second, since people cluster, medieval places between villages tend to be pretty empty.

In a genuinely empty land (as the BR numbers provide) finding people like armorers becomes impossible a level 2 province would have one and a level 4 province would have eight. Annual production of armor somewhere around two dozen suits of armor, maximum. How about two grain merchants in a level 3 province and four of them in a level 3. How exactly do these guilds make any money at all?

Empty lands leave the landscape full of adventures in wilderness where the PC's home castle can be near dragons, giants, goblins, a necromancer, and ancient ruins without peasants running about the place, but they also don't provide the civilization (trade, cities, commerce) that the game takes for granted too.

[AndrewTall]

My tuppence.

As I read the books BR populations are of taxpayers (or possibly hearths, thanks Ken) not of actual people - so you could easily have 3-5 times as many people as the numbers indicate without changing the setting otherwise.

I'm happy to say that 1-2 levels of population are simply disassociated from those around them - but not that 6-7 levels are missing - I think that the local lord would notice that only 1 town in 10 paid their taxes...

I would agree that BR should have more wilderness as thats a core adventure need, to justify it I would suggest that unlike RL the presence of the odd monster or three in a wood might discourage its exploitation. As such rather than saying hamlets and villages are 10 miles apart in low level provinces, the humans could inhabit only part of the province (say humans in the south, goblins in the north, and nobody anywhere near the behir to the west)

Some other places in the books - Sorelies in Alamie for example, could recently have been pillaged by goblin raiders and so be below the 'normal' population level, we see a snapshot of Cerilia after all, not necessarily the stable position.

Ideally I would want the system to reflect L1-2 provinces as mostly empty - possibly with only one part actually inhabited. L3-4 should be reasonably populated with a number of villages and a few towns, L5-6 should have quite chunky populations with a proper city, L7+should be a major urban centre...

[kgauck]

I'm happy to say that 1-2 levels of population are simply disassociated from those around them - but not that 6-7 levels are missing - I think that the local lord would notice that only 1 town in 10 paid their taxes...Sorelies in Alamie for example, could recently have been pillaged by goblin raiders and so be below the 'normal' population level, we see a snapshot of Cerilia after all, not necessarily the stable position.

I think the Sorelies case might be more common than not. If Cerilia is in more or less a constant state of war, then perhaps plenty of provinces have been pillaged and the controls of central authority both in terms of infrastructure (the courthouse burned along with all the tax rolls) but the personell too (and they killed the county assessor). So gradually and with effort, these must be rebuilt.

Medoere strikes me as oddly low in population (along with some of Roesone) and I think the reason is the recent wars of independence. The new powers are having to establish their governance, being unable to just take over for Diemed.

[Gwrthefyr]

Normally, these numbers were taken from the french Finance department of the time (1840's); these are probably less interesting for questions of productivity than for questions of consumption, I guess, so I won't bore you with the long tables throughout the book.

Average - Wheat: 2,71hL (which produced 328 rations); Meat: 20kg; Wine 70L

Upper Classes - Wheat: 365 rations (roughly 3,02hL, self-extrapolated); Meat: 328,18kg; Wine: 365 L
- This would probably apply not only to the aristocracy (chivalry/gentry, urban patriciate, upper nobility), but also, likely, to master merchants and craftsmen as well as important clergy.

(sugar consumption, for a period prior to the age of exploration, is less interesting, but for completeness' sake, the average was 3,4kg, while the upper class average was a whopping 50kg)

[dalor]

I had the same problems with the towns and cities in small population provinces having so many people.

Unlike the Medieval history we are used to, apparently Cerilia has a much stronger economy perhaps...especially with so many guilds being a facet of just about any province you can think of. Nearby (meaning close by provinces) could support the cities from provinces that don`t have cities or towns.

Also, as far as the population of such cities coupled with provinces, you can simply not worry about the gritty details...

Suspension of Disbelief is vital to any campaign setting, just like any session of D&D in general; but getting weighed down by so many details can cause just as much of a problem...at least for me and those that I have played with.


--- Jaleela <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET> wrote:
> The real problem with the sparse populations given is that they could not possibly support the towns listed in the domain sourcebook. People need food, and you need 80 to 90 people growing food to support every 10 people who are not farmers. You just can`t get away from that fact of life in an agrarian society.
>
> I don`t agree with having a level 1 province haveing 100,000 living in it in a plains state, but for every toen you have of a couple of thousand people, you need to have , say, 20 or 30 large villages and a number of hamlets planting crops to support the town.

[kgauck]

Getting weighed down by so many details can cause just as much of a problem...at least for me and those that I have played with.

Success in this area is not to focus on details, but broad principles. Forays into details are like experiments to confirm that you've settled on the right broad principles. What most simulationists are looking for is elegance. What we really want is a beautiful system that takes us from pages 136-142 in the DMG through individuals using the Profession check to determine income to towns, manors, holdings, provinces, and up to BR realms and domains without many problems.