| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 21 May 2016 : 04:01:08
I've been trying to reason out Waterdeep's population and how it would be supported, and I thought I'd post it here for anyone's interest. This will be lengthy, and keep in mind I have no background in demographics or agriculture, so take it as you will. A great deal of my calculations were made using Medieval Demographics Made Easy and its associated FAQ. When I'm referring to them below, I'll use MDME.
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
Apologies in advance for skipping around between metric and imperial systems, but I'm from Australia and I personally find metric easier to visualise.
WATERDEEP POPULATION OVERVIEW
For the purposes of this, "CIty of Waterdeep" refers to the population within the walls of the city, "Greater Waterdeep" refers to the population outside the walls (eg. Undercliff in 1479+), and "Agrarian Waterdeep" refers to the population farming the land past Greater Waterdeep.
The FRCS from 3E tells us that there are 132,661 people living in the City of Waterdeep, and up to 663,305 during summer (discussed further below). It also tells us that there are 1,347,840 people living in the region. I'm taking that number as during the winter months, and that it increases with the city population in summer to 1,878,484. Taking away the population in Waterdeep City, this leaves us with the combined population of Greater Waterdeep and Agrarian Waterdeep being 1,215,179. This is assumedly spread over a 30-40 mile radius around Waterdeep, according to the area controlled said to be controlled by Waterdeep in that book on p179.
So, populations are as follows:
City of Waterdeep (winter): 132,661
City of Waterdeep (peak of summer): 663,305
Greater & Agrarian Waterdeep: 1,215,179
Total (winter): 1,347,840
Total (summer): 1,878,484
Note that the summer population neatly rounds off to the 2 million quoted by some sources as the population of Waterdeep.
CITY OF WATERDEEP
3E established the City of Waterdeep as holding 132,661 people during the low season (likely winter while the city is closed up), and 5x that at the peak of summer. I run a 5E game in 1490, but I'm treating the numbers as the same. It's my understanding from my headcanon that the city population increases this much due to nobles returning from their holidays in warmer climates (along with their retinues of course), tourism, everyone wanting to be in Waterdeep because it's the most cosmopolitan city of the world, but not when it's winter, etc etc.
Other topics on Candlekeep have dealt with the size of Waterdeep city, and for the purpose of this I'm going to steal Wooly Rupert's calculation of 4.89 square miles. He does bring in the qualifier of City of the Dead, Mount Waterdeep taking up space in this, but I'll account for this later. This gives us a population density of 27,129 people per square mile in winter, and a population density of 135,645 in the peak of summer. I know this sounds like a lot, but hold on.
The MDME states that the average medieval city had a density of 38,850 people per square mile, and some commentators believe some cities could be 4x that. Google Paris demographics over history, and you'll find Paris far exceeded the average. So, actually 27,129 people/square mile seems pretty spacious! 135,645 is 3.5x the average, but still within the feasible range.
So what does that look like to the average person's living space, I hear you ask? For the purposes of figuring this out, we need to understand the average Waterdeep building. The 2E and 3E Waterdeep books flesh this out nicely. The average building is said to be a Class C building, which probably averages about 2.5 stories high. The bottom of these is probably going to be used solely for business, leaving 1.5 stories on average for domiciles. In the 2E book, it even shows us some example dwellings, and we find that on average a story of a building might hold 4 apartments. That means 6 apartments per building. This is just an average - noble houses will be huge, Dock Ward buildings will have tiny living spaces, but this I'm taking this Class C building as the middle ground.
Looking at the 3E map of Waterdeep, I counted the number of buildings in a 1000 ft x 1000 ft area (0.036 sq miles), and came up with 137. This was in the south of Castle Ward, which I took as a city average, and extrapolated that with the 4.89 miles to be 18,609 buildings. MDME tells us that this is a low number of buildings for a city this size in medieval times, but looking at the 2E building maps, it seems like Waterdeep buildings are just bigger than your average medieval one. Using MDME, I took about 15,000 of these as playing some role as a dwelling (80.6% of them). So that's 15,000 buildings that have some role as homes, with the average being a 2.5 story Class C dwelling, with 6 apartments. So that's an equivalent of 90,000 apartments (not a true number of apartments in Waterdeep, just an average). Still with me?
Now I took the 4.89 square miles, and thought about how much of that is actually taken up by buildings. I decided on 60%, taking into account streets, Mount Waterdeep, City of the Dead, etc. This was just a guess from looking at the map. This gives us 2.93 square miles of building space. Since 80.6% of these have a role as a home, that's 2.36 square miles of building space that serve some role as a home. This hasn't yet taken into account that there are 1.5 stories of dwelling space in the average building - that brings us back to 3.54 square miles of dwelling space.
However, as the buildings are shared and multi-story, some of this will be taken up by stairs, walkways between apartments, etcetera. Looking at the 2E maps, I reckon those shared spaces take up 20% of the building floor space. So that leaves is with 2.83 square miles of actual living space.
Summary of space:
Total City of Waterdeep area: 4.89 square miles (1267 hectares)
Buildings that have homes in them: 2.36 square miles (611 hectares)
Buildings without homes: 0.57 square miles (148 hectares)
Roads, Mount Waterdeep, City of the Dead: 1.96 square miles (508 hectares)
Total home dwelling space: 2.83 square miles (733 hectares)
So, we now have a base population of 132,661 living in 733 hectares of living space. This gives us 0.0081 hectares (81 square metres, 872 square feet) for each of our 90,000 apartments. That's a 9m x 9m space, which is about 1.5x the size of my own apartment I share with my fiance. Putting the people into those apartments, that means in low season there is an average of 1.47 people living in each apartment, and in high season 7.37 people. If you want to split up the apartments into individual living space, not accounting for shared areas in the home etc, that's 55 square metres per person in low season, and 11 square metres per person in high season. The MDME tells us that the average for pre-industrial Europe was 14 square metres, so this is feeling pretty good. The City of Waterdeep is relaxed and spacious during winter, but in summer it gets packed!
City of Waterdeep area: 4.89 square miles (1,266 hectares)
City of Waterdeep population (winter): 132,661
City of Waterdeep population density (winter): 27,129 per square mile
Average apartment size (1.47 people in winter): 81 sq metres (872 sq ft)
Average dwelling space per City of Waterdeep citizen (winter): 55 square metres (592 sq ft)
City of Waterdeep population (peak): 663,305
City of Waterdeep population density (peak): 135,645 per square mile
Average apartment size (7.35 people at peak): 81 sq metres (872 ft)
Average dwelling space per City of Waterdeep citizen (peak): 11 square metres (118 sq ft)
GREATER WATERDEEP
As a forewarning, This secondpart is the most arbitrarily created, and is a "middle ground" between the densely packed City of Waterdeep and the farmland of Agrarian Waterdeep. I actually calculated it following my calculations for the other two. Now, the FRCS states that Waterdeep controls the area for about 30-40 miles around. I'm going to take the immediate 12 miles as being part of a greater city area called Greater Waterdeep. The rest, going from 12 miles out to 40 miles out, is Agrarian Waterdeep. I calculated Greater Waterdeep to hold, taking into account the coastal position, about 288 square miles of land.
Greater Waterdeep holds the vast majority of the population - we've calculated the City population, and the Agrarian population density will be a lot lower by the nature of the work. The non-city based population of Waterdeep is 1,215,179. Taking the agrarian population and the city population into account (as discussed below and above), I came up with a population density for Greater Waterdeep of 3,100 people per square mile. If we take the land possessed by citizens that aren't roads, rivers, etc in that area, I would think that would be about 70%. If you take the average block of land here being lived on by a family of 3, that gives a block of land of 1,054 square metres (11,345 sq ft), or a block about 32m x 32m (106 ft x 106 ft). That's 351 square metres per person, far bigger than the City dwellings. That's a pretty big block of land, and it's likely most of these citizens farm enough vegetables to feed themselves, maybe keep some farm animals, etc - but not enough to feed much more than themselves at a guess.
Greater Waterdeep area: 288 square miles
Greater Waterdeep population: 892,800
Greater Waterdeep population density: 3,100 per square mile
Average family block of land: 1,054 square metres (11,345 sq ft)
Average land per Greater Waterdeep citizen: 351 square metres (3,778 sq ft)
AGRARIAN WATERDEEP
This accounts for the area from 12-40 miles out. I calculated this at 2,912 square miles, again taking the Sea of Swords and other landmarks into account. For this land, I used a population density of 100 people per square mile. I got this figure from:
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/10123/pre-modern-farming-what-percent-of-the-population-is-in-agriculture
I don't know a damn thing about pre-modern farming, or any farming for that matter, so I'm taking their calculations on face value.
Agrarian Waterdeep area: 2,912 square miles (754,208 hectares)
Agrarian Waterdeep population: 291,200
Agrarian Waterdeep population density: 100 per square mile
Average family block of land (family of 4.76 people): 123,284 sq metres (12.3 hectares)
Average land per Agrarian Waterdeep citizen: 25,900 square metres (2.59 hectares)
AGRICULTURE
The reference given in the Agrarian Waterdeep section tells us that one square mile of farmland produces enough food for 180 people. I'm not going to bother questioning this. The farmland of Agrarian Waterdeep gives us enough land to feed 524,160 people. Not nearly enough to feed our 1,878,484 people in the peak months!
This can be tackled in a three ways I can think of. We could argue that the people of Greater Waterdeep are self-sufficient on their blocks of land, which seems a fair argument. That's 892,800 self-sufficient citizens to add to 524,160, giving us a population supported of 1,416,960 - more than enough to get the base population through the year, but not enough for the summertime visitors. The second way is to use magic - for instance the Watchful Order might have spells that make the land especially fertile. The third way is to import it.
Either way, Waterdeep is probably going to have to import some food. The FRCS claims that some of Waterdeep's most important imports are grain and livestock, so this lines up with canon. My personal feeling is that anything more needed would be imported from Goldenfields. It's not far, they produce lots of food, and it probably tastes great with the blessings of Chauntea. It could be argued that Goldenfields couldn't produce enough with it's tiny area, quoted by Volo back in the day as 30 square miles. However, Volo can be wrong, and even the map given in his guide shows Goldenfields looking bigger than that. The 4E FRCS also says that Goldenfields has expanded. In my campaign, Goldenfields farms a 1600 square mile area (approximately a 23 mile radius around the centre). With the blessings of Chauntea which make their land super arable and able to produce more (I would rule 2-3x to make it a really amazing place), these imports could potentially compensate for any deficiency Waterdeep has.
FOOTNOTE
I'm wrecked from writing that, let me know if you spot any inconsistencies or errors. This was pretty much all knocked out last night after midnight, so I wouldn't be incredibly surprised. Hope this helps your campaigns! |
| 30 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 09:09:08
Next up is to re-work the situation of the nobles. The population in the area has dropped to 30% of what I thought in my original posts, and further, Ed has established that only 18% of the farmers are tenants, and 82% own their land. So of the 447,000 people in the "Waterdeep Environs", only 80,460 live there as tenants. It's also possible (probable?) that not all these tenants are the tenants of Noble Houses. This also throws out my "only noble houses can own land near Waterdeep" theory, as there's over 60,000 families owning their own land.
Unless... perhaps only Noble Houses can own over, say, 200 acres of land, within 150 miles of Waterdeep. And perhaps they're limited by decree to not own more than 100,000 acres, or something such... that allows both situations to fit. Of course, their tenants have to be derived from the 80,460 tenants, and split between 76 noble families that's only 1058 tenants per Noble House, or 211 families of 5. Assuming they earn the 8gp/family/month described in ACKS, that would earn the average Noble House 1,688gp/month. That's still enough income to pay for 5 of the family to live an "Aristocratic" lifestyle by 5e standards, but they would definitely require other income. Plus, squeezing the families for 8gp/family/month ACKS style might not go down so well when the neighbours a few miles away own their own land and pay no one...
More thought required, but definitely getting somewhere. As always, thoughts appreciated! |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 08:33:08
I looked closer at the plains in the "Waterdeep political area" on p100 of the 3e FRCS, as mentioned above, and applied those boundaries to the 1e/2e/5e non-condensed maps. After calculating the area for this, I got just over 29,000 square miles. If we averaged the population over that entire area, we'd have a population density of 42/square mile. However, last time I checked, the Triboar Trail was still too dangerous to travel, so I'm cutting about 2,000 sq miles of plains out there, leaving us with 27,000 square miles of plains and 45 people/sq mi (of plains). It's worth keeping in mind that the total "Waterdeep political area", including forests, mountains, hills, bogs, etc, comes to just under 75,000 sq miles. So if you're taking an overall population density for the area (like most calculations do), the density is actually only 16 people/sq mi.
I looked at the map and thought about where the most farmed areas might be - presumably along the rivers. Drawing this out on the map as "heavily farmed", then doing a region out from that as "moderately farmed", and then "lightly farmed", gave me close to three equal thirds. Not quite equal, but to make the calculations easy (and because that sort of estimate is very rough to start anyway), I'll say they're equal. So that's 9,000 sq mi of "heavily farmed", 9,000 sq mi of "moderately farmed", and 9,000 sq mi of "lightly farmed".
Now it's easy to play with the 45/sq mi number. Let's keep that for the moderately farmed group. For the lightly farmed group, I'm thinking 15/sq mi might be appropriate. That would mean 3 families of 5 every square mile - or, if gathered into steadings/hamlets of 150 people, the steadings in this region would be about 3.4 miles apart from one another. Then the heavily farmed group would be left as 75/sq mi. Assuming average steadings of the same size, there would be a steading about every 1.5 miles in that region. Assuming the 20 acres farm as standard, in heavily farmed areas farms would take up 47% of the land, the rest being left over for stands of trees, rolling drumlin hills, etc (as stated by Ed). This "spare land" would go right up to 91% of the land in lightly farmed areas!
In the "Waterdeep Environs" region of 8,000 sq mi discussed in previous posts, I would estimate about 4,000 sq mi is heavily farmed, 3,000 sq mi is moderately farmed, 800 sq mi is lightly farmed, and an area of about 200 sq mi around the City is unfarmed (reserved for civil buildings). This would give a "Waterdeep Environs" population of 447,000 - again, lower than the summer influx of people into the city, which feels in line with what THO has said in the past.
The beauty of all this is that it upholds what THO and Ed have said in the past (at least, I think it does), and it stays true to all the figures published across the editions for the area. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 04:50:07
Thanks a bunch for that! For those that are following along, it is mainly a defense by Ed of the population figures for the Silver Marches, and the implicit higher population density of that area. He also tackles how these populations can exist with the presence of monsters, the verdant amount of food in the area, and the many small defensible settlements that exist throughout the Sword Coast North. He says he has "no problem" with the population figures. It's an enlightening and enjoyable read, so thanks Faraer.
In addition, I have another piece of data to add to all this, which I can't believe I missed. Page 100 of the 3e FRCS has political boundaries for the areas described within, including Waterdeep - and it's a much larger area than I've been using. The boundaries of the Waterdeep area on this map go right up to include not only Red Larch and Westbridge, but also (it looks like after overlaying the maps) Triboar and even Phandalin and Leilon!
I had previously stated that there were around 8,000 sq mi of "plains" in the area I was looking at. In this new "Waterdeep region" area, there is as much as 20,000 sq mi of "plains". And that's assuming 0 population in the hills, when there's surely some!
This changes the above calculations quite dramatically. If we assume that 1,215,179 is the rural population in this area, and that they are spread equally over the 20,000 sq mi (not true, but for the purposes of the argument), we suddenly only have a population density of 60/sq mi. That's a LOT better than the 152/sq mi we had earlier.
If there's 60 people in a square mile (averaged over the area), and they're on 20 acres per family (taken from the above workings, but they could potentially live on far less given Elminster's Ecologies, Steven Schend's replies, and Ed's reply of farms being measured in "bowshots" - 1 of which could equate to around 13 acres), and there's 5 people in a family, that's 12 families on 240 acres. As there's 640 acres in a square mile, they would only take up 37.5% of the available land.
In practice you might just decide to put 120/sq mi in the areas more likely to be populated (eg. along the Dessarin and the Long Road). This could equate to around a third of the total area easily. A third of 20,000 is about 6,667 sq miles, so that x120 = 800,040 people in that area, leaving 415,139 for the remaining 13,333 sq miles. We could spread them out over that area for 31 people per square mile. At that density and the farm size we've talked about, farmed land would only in the further out areas would take up less than 20% of the area, with the rest being untamed.
I actually have a suspicion that the FR Atlas and it's "area" function may be under-calling the area, and we may even be able to achieve even lower population densities. I'll do some more work on this over the coming days. But in short, using the newly defined region as a guide we can get more acceptable population densities. Not that the old ones didn't work, but these would be closer to the situation THO has described in the past. For example, if we evenly distribute the population over the whole area at 60/sq mi, the people in the "Waterdeep Environs" area described in earlier posts would number about 480,000 - less than Waterdeep's summer influx of people from warmer climates. I have a good feeling about this, and I think we may be able to tick all the lore boxes with it.
Edit: We know of the existence in Ed's Realms of various farms and thorps a day's ride out from the walls of Waterdeep thanks to Blueblade. If we say all the above population is in thorps of around 70 adults, those thorps would be about 1.3 miles apart from each other. If we take them as hamlets of 300 adults, they would be about 2.85 miles apart from each other. In reality they would likely be a good distribution of the two, possibly about 2 miles from each other (or an hour's slow pace while carrying one's goods). This could work, and fits in with historical analogues. Admittedly, the "Savage Frontier" is a lot less savage from this point of view, but as per Ed's posts (as shown to us by Faraer), this may very well be how things are in the modern North. |
| Faraer |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 01:44:46
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU
Any chance you can direct me to this discussion? I feel like I'm slowly getting a better grasp of the situation, and I'd like to get it right.
If you go here, the posts are titledquote:
PLACES: Silver Marches (Ed's perspective)
PLACES: SILVER MARCHES (2 of 8)
PLACES: Part 3 of 8 Silver Marches from Ed
PEACES: Part 4 of 8 Silver Marches (from Ed)
PLACES: Part 5 of 8 Silver Marches (from Ed)
PLACES: Part 6 of 8 Silver Marches (from Ed)
PLACES: Part 7 of 8 Silver Marches (from Ed)
PLACES: 8 of 8 of Silver Marches (from Ed)
|
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 29 Jan 2017 : 00:09:25
quote:
Originally posted by Faraer
He also touched on Sword Coast North demographics in a multi-part post in 2001.
Any chance you can direct me to this discussion? I feel like I'm slowly getting a better grasp of the situation, and I'd like to get it right. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 28 Jan 2017 : 21:05:55
GRAIN is a HUGE staple to early cities, and how they even managed to come about. Its a shame WD doesn't have massive grain silos in the city itself, but you could imagine them just outside the walls (which is a rather stupid logistical situation, if you ever came under siege).
Although FR isn't Earth, and the people seem to eat better and are generally healthier than RW medieval humans, there are some comparisos we could still make; people lived off of grain products, like bread, and cereals (oatmeal, 'mush', etc). Even native Americans relied heavily upon corn for a lot of their diet (rice in the Far East, etc). Its fairly easy to grow, and the yields are excellent compared to many other crops planted in the same amount of area (and in FR, with priests of Chauntea and the like, yields would be even higher - perhaps MUCH higher).
I think some of us are making the mistake of comparing our modern (Euro-American) diets to that of people just a few hundred years ago. The 'common folk' didn't eat meat much, unless you were a hunter. Urban people had to rely of bread-products to exist. Other types of vegetables were either grown in small, home gardens (which feed people far better than a lot of you are assuming here), or purchased at the market from farmers who have gotten up before dawn to haul his crops into town.
Thus, most of the meals - probably only once per day for poorer folk (if that) - were pieces of bread, and sometimes a few vegetables if they were lucky. Spices would help, but things like salt & pepper were pricey (so, just for the aristocracy), and sugar was unheard of, so a lot of local, naturally-growing herbs and plants (things like dandelions) were used to make food taste better, and even flavor things like beer, mead, and wine (the first of which is also made out of grain, mead is made from honey so there were probably beekeepers, and wine could be made from any fruit, not just grapes). Both the brewed and baked products relied heavily upon yeast, to rise and for fermentation (human civilization probably wouldn't have arisen without yeast).
Meat seems much more readily available in FR than it was in the RW (I suppose the existence of 'monsters' creates a much greater need for large predators, who also prey upon each other). Humanoids even practice limited animal husbandry with things like pigs and cave rothe, and there seems to be a much larger variety of edible molds & fungi in D&D settings, thanks to the Underdark. And the humanoids themselves are a 'food source' for big monsters (and even each other, in lean times), which may not seem like it would affect an urban setting, but it does, in a 'trickle down' effect (human hunters kill and use creatures such as perytons and Owlbears for their meat, and those things are eating a lot of goblins, etc).
I'm just not seeing any problem here - we KNOW RW there were ancient metropolis' that fed their populations, even in very arid areas like the Middle East. There is a big difference between how WE (today) eat, and the hunk of crusty bread some waif was lucky enough to nibble on once a day. The less food you have, the more efficient your body becomes. The numbers aren't 'whacked', just how we perceive them are. |
| Faraer |
Posted - 28 Jan 2017 : 20:24:41
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU
Edit: So much of this revolves around those pesky 3e campaign guide population figures, which I suspect were not part of Ed's original vision... every time this comes up, THO and Ed downplay the importance of the Waterdhavian farm.
My recollection is that, indeed, the Wizards designers redid the population figures for the book, rather crudely applying the 10% urban ratio across the board, as if Ed hadn't worked out the demographics properly in the first place, and they justified this at the time by referring (correctly) to the need to fix a few inflated numbers, notably that for Calimport in FR3 Empires of the Sands.
Here's a note that Ed posted to REALMS-L in 1999:quote:
As for how Waterdeep feeds itself, the Dessarin and the Delimbiyr valleys are verdant and aren't nearly as over-farmed as most real-world arable land. Many herds are fed up and down the Sword Coast and driven to market throughout the year (except for the winter months, which careful readers will note is when many of the wealthiest 'big eaters'--the party-throwing nobles--relocate to warmer climes). Most Waterdhavians grow their own windowbox and rooftop herbs, cellar mushrooms, and the like, and many middle-class and upper-class go out beyond the walls to buy from vendors or even at farmers' markets and farms, beyond. This is the reason I was so frustrated at the page length of FR1; all of this sort of detail had to go...
He also touched on Sword Coast North demographics in a multi-part post in 2001. This has been being discussed for a while! |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 25 Jan 2017 : 12:16:48
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU
Long story short, 3 main options going forward (with some in between):
1. Go with the purist approach and say there is 0 rural population, and the 3e figures are incorrect.
2. Go with the compromise approach and say there is a rural population of 684,535, and the website figures are an inaccurate census roundup.
3. Go with the larger census figures with a rural population of 1,215,179, keeping all the published figures.
I fear that options 2 and 3 stray too far from Ed and THO's vision, though I'm also not entirely sure. I also don't want to ignore the 3e figures. At the moment I'm leaning towards option 2, while putting the rural population far enough from the city (half-day's ride) to hopefully fit in with the THO/Ed vision while respecting the 3e figures.
I'd love to hear from people their own opinions on what to do here. I plan to develop this area properly into a mini-setting for my own players (and hopefully even for the DM's Guild), but I don't want to start on false premises.
A half day travel is maybe 12 miles (four hours at 3 miles each) which is unlikely to have Zero population. There almost certainly will be some people living that close to the city. Even if just estates of the Lords of Waterdeep and Guildmasters. There should be some farming within that area, even if just fruit trees.
One acre per family might be a little lean. An acre per person makes better sense, though children likely supported by a half an acre. The reason I offer this number is because corp yields likely are smaller, they clearly are smaller them modern times. There also is need for food for working animals, space wasted by roads, consumed by water (steams or rivers)and/or trees (Both water and fire wood are needed to be close) for a family.
It clearly is possible to say that the City has no farms within its border, the city lines. However I just can not see it being too far from the City walls. Maybe a mile or two that no stucture or resident is permitted. This lives a lot of land that can and should contain hamlets and farming communities. Waterdeep needs food that can not be produced in the city.
There is another factor that you might consider, though clearly was not original Realms. [1] In D&D a person needs only a pound of food a day, Real life it is more like 2 or three pounds a day. The D&D farms can feed more people.
I can not offer any best answer. In part because it depends of the era of Waterdeep you are talking about. Waterdeep never is constant it would grow and fade some in population and power over its several years of life.
[1] THO has indicated that Ed developed his Realms before adopting D&D rules as a tool. Thus his first vision likely was closer to the rules of Earth as to food consumption. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 25 Jan 2017 : 11:20:23
Essentially what THO has said is that there isn't enough of a population in the country around the city to support the x5 increase in the city's population that occurs in summer.
Taking the 3e figures, the winter city population is 132,661.
The summer population is 663,305 (5x winter). That means 530,644 (4x winter) flee to warmer climes in winter.
The total population for the region is 1,347,840.
Up until now, I'd been assuming that the total population was only winter + rural (hence the 1,215,179 number for rural Waterdeep). However, if the summer population is included in the total population, that leaves only 684,535 people for the rural population (56% of my previous numbers). However, there's also some problems with this interpretation.
1. THO implies that there's not enough population around the city to account for the summer influx. These rural numbers are clearly more than the summer influx, so that doesn't line up. HOWEVER, they could be accounted for by a population a little bit further out than just "around the city" - say, in the Talmost lands northeast of Ardeep Forest that we learned about in Eric Boyd's Waterdeep Environs supplement. By putting them at least a half-day away from the city, perhaps this might get around this? We know an area around a half-day out of the city is maintained by the City only for civic buildings:
quote:
Originally quoted by The Hooded One, quoting Ed Greenwood
With all of that said: no, Waterdeep lacks foulburghs, shanty-towns, or suburban expansion, BY LAW. In addition to the Code Legal set forth in the CITY OF SPLENDORS boxed set, Waterdeep has an ever-increasing body of ‘case law’ in the form of Lords’ decrees, built up with the passing years. One of them forbids any permanent structures outside the city walls, for a distance of half a days’ patrol, except by license of the Lords (who only grant such permission for civic buildings). So the city occupies the entire plateau (note the cliffs along much of its eastern side), and the meadows around are kept clear for caravans to assemble, camp upon arrival (temporarily living there, with no permanent structures allowed), livestock markets, wagon-trains to muster for “straight runs in” to the docks or to dockside warehouses, and so on.
You’ll see a very brief scene in the Waterdeep novel that Elaine and I wrote (if it survives the editing) wherein two nobles go hawking in the meadows early in the morning; later in the day or at evening, this activity would be impossible due to all the Waterdhavians ‘dining out’ (eating picnic meals, often with the families of several friends meeting so the children can run and play while the grown-ups sit, drink and eat, and talk), lovers trysting, folk meeting to talk business (perhaps shady or illicit dealings) in relative privacy, and so on. So Waterdeep uses the open land around it, on a daily basis.
(By the way, the novel also makes clear why the City of the Dead isn’t where the poor sleep - - unless they sleep by day. The gates of the cemetery are always closed from dusk until dawn, when ghosts roam in sufficient profusion to drive most folk mad.)
Caravan camping (and thus, daily prosperity due to caravan trade) plus controlling in some small way who can be a permanent resident of the city, plus providing some security from orc hordes by affording any attacking force as little cover and ready plunder as possible, are the reasons for keeping the meadows clear. Often traffic jams are so severe in the city streets (as I mentioned in a much earlier post here at Candlekeep), that going “out a gate and around” (to another gate, and back in again) is by far the faster way to travel; this plus the need to swiftly being in food from Goldenfields and keep the city from strangling on its own trade . . . all contribute to the decision to prevent Waterdeep sprawling over the surrounding landscape.
Security and caravan-camping will be the considerations that keep cities everywhere else from partially (usually) or wholly (rarely) preventing building outside the walls. Most cities restrict building to some extent, to keep roads clear and water-sources unfouled or accessible, or prevent woods from being entirely hewn down.
So, possibly we can make this problem work by having the rural population shuffled away a bit from the city.
2. There's the "home to as many as two million people quote" from the Wizards website, which is why I originally structured the population figures like I did.
quote:
Originally posted by Wizards of the Coast
The City of Splendors is certainly the greatest of the Sword Coast cities and perhaps the greatest cities on the face of the world. It’s home to as many as two million people, though an accurate census is all but impossible since so many come and go, visiting the open city to trade and otherwise seek fame and fortune.
This could be ignored by saying the census was off, and they were rounding up heavily from the 1,347,840 figure, or we can take the original population figures I calculated (1,878,484) as correct and say that all that 1,215,179 population is off in past a half-day's ride from the city away.
Long story short, 3 main options going forward (with some in between):
1. Go with the purist approach and say there is 0 rural population, and the 3e figures are incorrect.
2. Go with the compromise approach and say there is a rural population of 684,535, and the website figures are an inaccurate census roundup.
3. Go with the larger census figures with a rural population of 1,215,179, keeping all the published figures.
I fear that options 2 and 3 stray too far from Ed and THO's vision, though I'm also not entirely sure. I also don't want to ignore the 3e figures. At the moment I'm leaning towards option 2, while putting the rural population far enough from the city (half-day's ride) to hopefully fit in with the THO/Ed vision while respecting the 3e figures.
I'd love to hear from people their own opinions on what to do here. I plan to develop this area properly into a mini-setting for my own players (and hopefully even for the DM's Guild), but I don't want to start on false premises.
Edit: fixed a quote. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 25 Jan 2017 : 10:43:34
quote:
Originally posted by Khaelieth
Great breakdown - It sounds feasible for another reason: pre-industrial society tended to have only about 10% of the population living in cities.
That 10%/90% city/rural breakdown I suspect is where the 3e rural population figures come from... but I suspect that they ignore Waterdeep's uniqueness. I know I've been taking them as gospel in the above posts, but I've recently been reconsidering a lot of it when I take into account what Ed and THO have said in that past, like these quotes:
quote:
Originally posted by The Hooded One
If you read the published lore, you'll find much of the population that floods into Waterdeep during the summer months winters much further south, either because they have the wealth to go somewhere warmer (the nobles) or because they are traders from more southerly lands (the Tashalar in particular) who spend the winter making the wares they sell each summer . . . or just because winter life is easier the farther south one goes (food more plentiful, no need to chop as much firewood to keep from freezing, fewer desperate hungry monsters hunting the snows).
That same snowbound condition in winter (howling storms, ice and deep snow everywhere, roads impassable, most mounts and methods of carrying large cargoes (wagons) inoperable) keeps Waterdeep or anyone from easily calling on anyone in the distant countryside, or convincing them to go anywhere or do anything (unless Waterdeep promises and swiftly provides food and warmth in return for such service).
You seem to think of Waterdeep as akin to real-world New York, with New Jersey to call on. There IS no "large population at their doorstep" for Waterdeep: there's a small, scattered, hunkering-down-in-winter one. And if monsters, raiding brigands, or the proverbial orc horde is on the loose, such populations will flock to wherever they can get shelter. That will be Waterdeep for a few families of crofters, but the large numbers you're envisioning (Secomber, Silverymoon) will be defending their own, not abandoning all they own and hold dear to go help fight for Waterdeep.
You've got to stop seeing the Realms as having modern real-world easy transportation and communications. Throughout this thread, you've been taking the sort of tactical overview of the Waterdeep region that, say, a real-world military general might. However, except for a few of the Lords of Waterdeep and a handful of Palace courtiers, that's not the way Waterdhavians or the neighbours see things. Guildmasters, most Lords, and everyone else tend to have much narrower, focused-on-themselves-or-their-field-of-trade/profession viewpoints...so convincing them to do what you want them to do is going to be difficult. Remember, Waterdeep isn't a military tyranny, but does have a history of being so - - which means folk will be watching for any attempt on Waterdeep's part to militarily coerce them into anything.
Myself, I'd think Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, Silverymoon, Secomber, Everlund, and the dwarf holds in particular would all be very alarmed if Waterdeep ever started recruiting large numbers of people "from the countryside" for any sort of military purpose, unless all olf these places had already agreed on such a tactic in the face of, say, an orc horde. You say "you would think" people outside Waterdeep "are pretty loyal" to Waterdeep. Not so, when it comes to risking their lives in military service. They certainly see Waterdeep's usefulness as a market and protection for them, but they also have daily resentments at all the little things attendant on Waterdeep wielding its powers (patrols giving them orders, etc.). Self-interest remains the most powerful motivator, in the Realms as in the real world. I think your recruiters, if they expected crofters in the countryside to come flocking to Waterdeep's army ranks, would get an unpleasant surprise. You blithely speak of getting youngsters as recruits that the army could instil loyalty in, but ignore the fact that restless youth want to see the world, not "join the devil they know." And just who is going to do that instilling of loyalty? Waterdeep doesn't have a "boot camp" set up or standing infrastructure; its militia training is very different, and concentrates on able-bodied adults; it's supposed to be the population defending itself, not youngsters fighting while everyone else hides or flees.
It's wrong to think that everyone from the countryside rushes into Waterdeep every summer, and goes back to freeze in the wilderness every winter. Yet the published lore, from the first (don't forget to read KNIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), makes it clear that the huge summer increase in population is almost entirely traders from afar, coming to trade and departing again in winter. There IS no huge country population around the city that could account for that huge summer increase.
Does this make more sense? I'm not adding or inventing anything here, I'm just restating what's in the published Realms canon.
quote:
Originally posted by The Hooded One
You post: "When you talk about people from Waterdeep spending the winter down south, you're talking about a fraction of the population."
No, I'm not. As I've already clearly stated, I'm talking about the huge majority of the city's population, the merchants and craftworkers from elsewhere, who come to Waterdeep every summer to make their coins, and who "go back home" in the countryside of the Tashalar, and Amn, and Tethyr, and Tharsult, and many other places. Who have NO loyalty to Waterdeep as "a home to fight for" and who would relocate their summer trading without hesitation if, say, word reached them that there was a plague in Waterdeep. Or any sort of war.
These quotes were from this thread which isn't too pleasant to read, but it has some interesting lore in it from her grace The Hooded One. |
| Khaelieth |
Posted - 25 Jan 2017 : 09:36:07
Great breakdown - It sounds feasible for another reason: pre-industrial society tended to have only about 10% of the population living in cities. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 23 Jan 2017 : 01:10:08
One of the things I take away from this is that farm sizes in the realms can potentially be a lot smaller than I expected. It seems like 20 acres might be appropriate for the Sword Coast North in general, but as a Waterdhavian family can potentially support themselves on just 1 acre, perhaps an average of 5 acre farms might not be too unreasonable. That would mean I could reduce the area occupied by farms drastically - by about 75%!
Edit: So much of this revolves around those pesky 3e campaign guide population figures, which I suspect were not part of Ed's original vision... every time this comes up, THO and Ed downplay the importance of the Waterdhavian farm. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 23 Jan 2017 : 01:01:49
Posting a series of designer quotes that haven't yet been posted in this thread to aid the discussion and so forth...
This quote was salvaged from Ed's Twitter:
quote:
Originally posted on Twitter on Jan 11, 2017
Q:Reading "Elminster's Ecologies" on farm size - for a project of mine, any chance you could reveal the avg Waterdeep farm size?
Ed: No farms in Waterdeep proper. Goldenfields is HUGE. Most of the farms up the Amphail road are owned by nobles and farmed by tenants, and are small; i.e. a few fields, an orchard, and two grazing pastures/paddocks, rotated constantly so livestock manure fertilizes next year's tillage (orchards excepted, of course). Most fields in the Savage Coast North are measured in "bowshots" (yep, length of arrow shot from a bow), and of course that's WILDLY different from one archer + bow to the next. ;}
quote:
Originally posted by THO in thread "Questions for Ed Greenwood (2008)" on May 2, 2008
I’m afraid I haven’t read that particular book, but I have studied history both academically and casually for about forty years, and have become very familiar with “what had implications when” regarding the stirrup, various forms of water pumps and ploughs, paper, local understanding of crop rotation and fertilization, etc. in the Dark Ages/medieval/Renaissance times in Europe. That sort of knowledge has shaped my ongoing creation of the Realms NOT as a “must ape real-world history here, and thus,” but as a deepening aid to understanding causes and effects and spreading implications (the ripples spreading out across the pool from where the flung stone plunges in). This in turn allows me to judge the wide social effects of particular magics, and so on.
Goldenfields is a vast walled temple-farm where hundreds of acres of fields are tended with zeal, full irrigation, and expertise matched nowhere else among humans regarding “companion planting” (carrots love tomatoes, et al). Tolgar Anuvien is the character you mention, and he trains and coordinates the priests under him in using spells he has crafted or perfected to banish blights, kill insect pests, and drive off such damaging predators as flocks of hungry birds, hungry bunnies, and burrowing voles - - and most importantly to affect temperature and moisture to avoid the killing frosts that afflict much of the moisture-abundant North, so crops inside Goldenfield’s walls don’t suffer nearly as much “kill off” as those outside. In addition, Goldenfields practices enthusiastic experimentation in pickling, warehousing, fermentation (into medicines, cordials, and wines) and drying of edible fruits and vegetables.
All of which has made for maximum yields, and the temple-farm’s famous role as the “granary of the North.” Built where it is to be within irrigation reach of the great river Dessarin, and easy market reach of Waterdeep (which is both an important port and a huge food market that can’t possibly feed itself due to building on darn near all the tillable soil within its walls), as well as “on the road to” Silverymoon and the heart of the Sword Coast North, Goldenfields has expanded often; its generous gifts of food and seeds to those in need have given it a “kind, nice” reputation. That, coupled with its holy nature, make it more of an “attraction” in the minds of all than a target.
So saith Ed. Creator of Goldenfields and Waterdeep and the Realms all around them. Afet, I know Ed has read “Guns, Germs, and Steel” as well as “Rats, Lice, and History” and for that matter many books, from long-ago L. Sprague deCamp titles to far more recent releases, on what inventions and innovations occurred when, and what effects they had. (I’m away from my own books right now, and am trying to recall the title of one Ed mentioned to me a year-and-some ago; something about “Windmills, Waterwheels, and - -” something or other . . . Anyway, his shelves bristle with such tomes [Salt, A World History, a similar book about rice, all sorts of books on medieval engineers and how they must or could have built Stonehenge, Roman aqueducts, roads, et al.]
love to all,
THO
quote:
Originally posted by THO in thread "Questions for Ed Greenwood (2008)" on May 7, 2008, as followup to previous quote
A handful of communities keep warrens and fish ponds to “farm” meat and fish for the table (and most steadings across the Realms are mixed-crop farms where game is kept penned for food, from lizards in some of the hot lands to the familiar chickens in temperate Dalelands). Many coastal communities construct weirs as “live pens” for shellfish and other fish collected in tidal shore nets and traps . . . and so on.
Yes, clergy of Umberlee in the case of said coastal communities, and many other deities in places where temples of that god exist in a community, have developed small spells that keep eggs (and plants) warm but not too warm (and wet but not too wet) regardless of outside weather. So other faiths do work to increase crop yields, tend livestock, renew and shape natural growth, etc. to help feed local mouths. However, this is small-scale, often “unofficial” as opposed to being part of the doctrine of the faith, and “sideline” (whereas for Chauntea, it’s the main thrust of worship and religious service).
Wizards get involved in such work rarely. In Cormyr, War Wizards were called in to work hard alongside every other spellcaster in the realm to help repair things (prevent famine, and banish the blight) in the wake of the Devil Dragon war, but in general it would not be part of their work to do so. Across the Realms, a wizard MIGHT develop a pest-banishing or crop fertilizing magic if commissioned to do so, but it isn’t the sort of magic that most arcane spell users and creators would think of trying to create, or be comfortable developing. They would have to “work up to it” by crafting, handling, and mastering spells that brought them closer, step by step, to this sort of nurturing (as opposed to what they are more used to: spells of short or instantaneous duration that cause damage or an effect that is often violent and usually a single-step transformation as opposed to initiating or boosting natural growth or development.
So saith Ed. Who has been creating official spells for the game since 1979 or so, and has built up quite a roster of them (and if one uses the "component" spells he put into Volo's Guide To all Things Magical, it's possible to roleplay a one-player-one-DM campaign, or a more conventional campaign using several PC wizards, focused on continuously devising and using new spells).
love to all,
THO
quote:
From Elminster's Ecologies - The Settled Lands, p7
It seems like you can't walk ten yards in the settled lands without stepping in a wheat field or pumpkin patch. I'd guess that 70 percent of Cormyreans make their living from farming. In parts of the Dalelands, it may be closer to 90 percent. Fruit and vegetable farms usually require smaller amounts of land to generate acceptable profits; in Cormyr, an acre of raspberries earns as much as twenty acres of wheat; but they also require a lot of labor. While a corn farmer relaxes in the winter, an apple grower is busy pruning dead branches. A wheat farmer uses scythes and other tools to help harvest his crops; a blueberry farmer picks his fruit by hand.
Farm sizes vary according to the quality of the land and their proximity to villages. In the isolated regions of northeastern Sembia, where the sandy soil supports only the hardiest grains, farms rarely exceed a few acres, producing enough food for a small family and a couple of horses. In Cormyr, where the soil is more fertile, farms may comprise 20-80 acres. In some instances, a village may claim ownership of all farmable land within a mile circumference; village elders assign plots of 2-10 acres to selected families. The families keep a percentage of the crops, usually about half, and turn over the rest to the elders, who trade it with neighboring villages for tools, weapons, and other goods. Some of the communal farms in Featherdale cover 100 acres, while the government supported estates of Suzail average two or three times that size.
Farms near cities usually fare the best. Cities can muster the economic resources to build dams and finance irrigation projects. It's easier to sell crops and livestock in a city, and easier to buy equipment and supplies. Progressive communities, including Suzail and Arabel, will loan farmers money to buy land or see them through lean years. The inns, taverns, and shops provide outlets for information; you're more likely to hear about innovative irrigation techniques and new markets for cattle while making business contacts than by enjoying the solitude of your fields.
If a farmer without access to a city wants to get rich,
he'd better find a diamond mine in his corn field.
quote:
Originally posted by The Hooded One, in thread "Waterdeep's holdings?" on the 3rd of June, 2009
Well, "massively inefficient" isn't necessarily the way someone in the Realms would view matters, but as it happens, Goldenfields can send much of its produce by barge to within shouting distance of Waterdeep.
Waterdeep is a port that both imports and exports food, and as an exporter has always been a major destination for foodstuffs, lumber, et al drawn from all over the Sword Coast North. One of those foodstuffs are meat on the hoof: large herds of rothe, cattle, swine, horses, and the like. Many of those beasts are driven VERY SLOWLY towards the fields outside Waterdeep where they will be bought, grazing as they go. They are often laden with sacks of, or pull carts full of, other foodstuffs such as wheels of cheese, sausages, hardy root vegetables, and the like, as they make the journey.
This is all drawn from Ed's notes. As are such details as:
Waterdhavian nobles typically import their own food from their own country estates, bringing enough extra to feed their servants (and, usually, the servants doing the work contrive to bring enough extra to "sell a little on the side" in the city). Waterdhavian citizens with windowboxes or roof gardens often grow their own herbs and leaf vegetables, and may protect them with "birdtangle" nets that enmesh pigeons and other birds for the stewpot. Waterdhavian street youths customarily sling or hurl stones to bring down rats, birds, and other creatures for sale as food, and so on.
When Ed created the Realms, he specifically thought through such matters as where cities would get their food from. Tolgar Anuvien, one of the earliest adventurers in D&D play in the Realms, founded Goldenfields, but it was because of a vision sent by Chauntea, and Ed made it clear that she'd sent many such visions to many of her clerics (allowing many cities to grow).
To answer your question about grain specifically, though, grain was shipped from three main areas to the docks of Waterdeep: southern Calimshan, the Tashalar, and distant Var the Golden.
quote:
Originally posted by Steven Schend, in thread "Questions for Steven Schend", 7th Aug, 2008
This involves a LOT of factors as you noted above (and I'm hardly an expert or even a student of farming). Even so, here's a benchmark or three off the top of my head:
Think much much smaller in terms of land parcels as the standard; I'd say price by the acre, as a family of four might be able to grow enough food on an acre to support itself (if it had a cow or a few sheep as well).
If I were GMing an FR game, I'd look at what the DMG gives as a base rate for real estate/land and go with that; if it doesn't mention farmland, make one acre equal in cost to what a farmer allegedly earns in five years (or might scrape together and buy with savings over 20).
If you're in a civilized realm (like Cormyr), it'll be more expensive (and also less likely to have land NOT owned by a noble or the Crown). The closer you are to a major city, the more expensive, etc.
In terms of smallholds, yeah, 100 acres might be a good start. As for noble landholdings, I'd say start at no less than 500 acres for a noble family on hard times; for a powerful noble, no less than 10,000 acres should do.
Prices should adjust upward with each factor:
Closeness to a trade road (more if it's patrolled/protected)
Closeness to other trade avenues (creeks to rivers, lakes, etc.) (And access to multiple avenues of trade increases prices further)
Closeness to a settlement (increase with settlement size)
Arability of land (and what sorts of crops grow therein)
Grazability of land (and what sorts of livestock will eat scrub)
Protection of land from weather extremes
Amount of predators in area (and what types)
quote:
Originally posted by Steven Schend, in thread "Questions for Steven Schend", 8th Aug, 2008
Wow, Icelander--thanks for all that detail. It goes to show that you're MUCH more knowledgeable about the topic than I am, and all I'm bringing to the table is my guesswork and old thoughts from discussions with Ed on world building.
That said, here's more opinion and thought on the prices et al:
The increments on range/distance from settlements or to trade avenues should be measured both in terms of miles and in terms of how far someone can walk, ride a horse, or take a cart in one day (i.e. the 30 mile standard, IIRC, if there's a cleared, paved road, less otherwise). Farther away than that, and yes it gets historically wonky, but we do have farms farther from settlements and it'd be cheaper. I'd say use your 250gp/acre for farms 20 miles out and making it incrementally 5% cheaper (farther away) or more expensive (closer and under better protection) with each 5 mile increment. Yes, that makes farmland right next to a major city 20% more expensive (300 gp/acre, but don't forget all those other factors). Problems (predators) reduce costs, while benefits (rivers, paved roads, etc.) increase costs, as expected.
That 250/acre also applies mainly to arable, good farmland. If it's tough to grow things (ala Scotland or the North without magical support), the price drops. If it's land only good for hunting, the price on the land drops (unless it's home to something really worth hunting like a lot of deer, not just trophy monsters or such). Land for grazing cattle depends on the demands for cattle and its products in that area, etc.
So many factors to juggle and so many variables--you might even make it easier on yourself by making it an even 200 gp/acre just to keep the math a bit cleaner.
So there's your benchmark--200 gp/acre of good farmland (with farming, grazing, homesteading, and wildcrop (wild berries, roots, etc.)). If you want to break it down even more, think of it as 50gp/acre/use of land. If it's only got one use (an acre of scrubby gravel is useless save in defense of a city, not allowing an invader support), it's 50gp/acre. If it's healthy soil with good location, it's going to be costly.
As for your player's knight, he could always roleplay his way to cheaper land, using diplomacy with his friend nobles to get better deals. Or simply have them cut him a sweetheart deal for the land and then hold it over his head for the rest of his days.
Think of it this way--much of the lands around Waterdeep are owned either by the Lords or by the many noble families of the city, though they leave much of it open as grazing land and "public land" for everyone's use. For the nobles, that gets them a break on some taxes, I would think, but also note that they have their established "estates" and "ranches" all over the areas within a few days' ride of the City, and not all of it is farmland. Think wild hunting lands (ala the land gifted to heroes who play Stardock), think roving hills of berries and grapevines or twisted scrub in which to hide.
The equation is this--not all land is created equal for all purposes, but all land is worth something to someone (and what's it's worth to you is what I'll charge to part with it).
|
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 12 Jan 2017 : 01:52:51
Thanks, always interested in feedback!
I also recently came across this Ed quote, and I'll be adjusting the situation regarding land ownership accordingly:
quote:
In the Waterdeep uplands (Goldenfields and similar temple-farms farmed by the resident clergy specifically excluded), the ratio is 82 percent owners to 18 percent tenants, but if you use the expanded definition, things shift only slightly (to 79 owners vs. 21 percent tenants).
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 11 Jan 2017 : 12:36:05
That is indeed an interesting idea, and it would resemble somewhat what was done in our reality (especially if the land extends well beyond the walls of protected Waterdeep). |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 11 Jan 2017 : 02:01:02
I was thinking that the Warlords (and later Aghairon and his Hidden Lords) would have handed out parcels of land appropriate to the times. For instance, House Talmost, which although like the other noble houses isn't officially elevated until 1248 DR, has claims back to 942 DR, during the Troll War. I was thinking that, as there was more free land in the past, the Warlords might have been more easy with giving away land titles. As an aside, it's my guess that Talmost was a minor Warlord of his own at the time, and Warlord Gharl of Waterdeep had to promise him a great deal of land if they were to join together.
For this I decided to differentiate between:
"Titled land" - the land originally granted by the Warlord or the Open & Masked Lords.
"Operative land" - the land that the Noble House, at any one point of time, actually controls.
The above posts do just refer to "land", treating Titled and Operative Land as if they're the same, but this is just a simplification to help with calculations in this early study. In practice I have it as Titled Land staying the same, but Operative Land varying with the times. The images put up were to illustrate Titled Land (though my ideas on this have changed since they were uploaded).
I figure "Operative Land" would vary a great deal, especially during the 1400s. For instance House Estelmer loses everything to the Ralnarths by Blackstaff Tower, but is a House again after Laeral's move to reinstate the old houses as mentioned in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. To illustrate my thinking, through House Estelmer and the Ralnarths:
1. The powerful merchant family of Estelmer is made a Noble House by Open Lord Baeron, granting them some Titled land.
Titled Land: House Estelmer own all titled land granted to them by Baeron.
Operative Land: House Estelmer operates all land titled to them, on which peasant families live and pay tax to them.
2. By the 1400s, House Estelmer has fallen on hard times. I would say before the laws were passed allowing for nobles to sell their titles, the Estelmers may have already sold a great deal of their "operative land" (say, 70%) to the highest bidder - in this case the up and coming Ralnarth family. Although the Estelmers still hold the Title, they sell the land to the Ralnarths to use as they will. Thus House Estelmer stays a Noble House, and the Ralnarths stay commoners at this point, despite holding a significant amount of land.
In addition, the Ralnarths have bought up a significant part of the operative land of House Anteos and Hunabar.
Titled Land: Still entirely in the name of House Estelmer.
Operative Land: 30% operated by House Estelmer, 70% operated by Ralnarth family (who also own a great deal of the operative land of House Anteos and Hunabar).
3. Then the laws are passed, and by this time House Estelmer is truly desperate. They sell their Noble Title, and the "Titled Land" officially becomes the property of the Ralnarths, who, according to the new laws, become House Ralnarth. Without any Titled Land, House Estelmer ceases to exist in the eyes of the current regime. The Ralnarths also keep the operative land of some of House Anteos and Hunabar, but they're not so rich enough as to buy out their Titles.
Titled Land: All property of the new House Ralnarth
Operative Land: House Ralnarth operates all titled land, plus some of the operative land of House Anteos and House Hunabar
4. Most recently, Laeral Silverhand becomes Open Lord, and reinstates the old Noble Houses - restoring their "titled land". The Ralnarths are understandably furious (although time may reveal they were supported by foreign interests, which encouraged Laeral to make her move). House Estelmer is reinstated, and House Ralnarth is no more. What happens to the "Operative Land" is a HUGE question, thus far unmentioned in the published material. Two extremes of how this could happen:
4a: The Ralnarths still own and operate all the Estelmer titled land, but they are forced to pay a tithe to House Estelmer. Over time, House Estelmer gains more wealth, and is able to slowly buy the operative land back from the Ralnarths.
4b: The Ralnarths are totally evicted from the land, and all Titled Land and Operative Land reverts back to House Estelmer.
I'm inclined to split the 4a/4b approach over the different "new houses", depending on what they were up to. According to the SCAG, "Zhents, Thayans, and Baldurian merchants" were implied to have been involved in some of those new houses, and I imagine they would be treated differently based on their activities. For example, if the Ralnarths had been in the pay of the Thayans and had been supporting mass slavery behind the scenes, Laeral might use that as an excuse to go with 4b. But, if they were merely very successful Waterdhavian merchants, she might be more likely to go with 4a.
The point of this example is to show that the volume of Titled Land for the old houses does not change over time, only the operative land. For most of Waterdeep's history, the Title cannot be bought, but the Nobles can still do with it what they want - such as sell the use of it to the higher bidder, or even buy the use of a fellow Noble Houses' land to suit their purposes. Thus, the Operative Land changes widely with the times and such.
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that old houses HAD to be awarded more Titled Land than newer houses. I just decided to go with that, as I thought it made sense that when there were less Houses around, the Warlord/Open Lord would be more likely to make grant larger land titles. You could easily say that this would necessarily vary with individual circumstances. However, I chose to vary the land grant size only by when it was granted, with the allusion that Houses would be upset if they weren't awarded the same amount of land as other Houses around the same time. So, it was done this way to prevent civil strife. At the same time, some Houses got more valuable land than others (such as the land around Amphail you mentioned). I would be interested to hear arguments for doing it a different way, however. At the end of the day the Warlords and later the Open Lords could have done it in any number of ways, and not necessarily the most ideal way.
Anyway, that's my explanation for why although the older houses have more Titled Land, due to the variations you talk about they might have far less or more Operative Land. The above posts are taking values with the assumption that Operative Land = Titled Land for the sake of simplicity in these early workings, but in practice they would not be equal. |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 11 Jan 2017 : 00:51:05
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU
I agree that it makes sense for the nobles to own the land, and the peasants to pay them rent, but not be all the way serfs. I've been working on a system of making this region work, through a combination of ACKS rules and looking at agricultural analogues.
I've drawn up a draft of the land I think is reasonable for the noble families to own. In my head, the granting of a noble title is associated with a land grant. The further in the past the title was given, the more land was given: the Ulbrinters were given far more land under Ahghairon's rule than the Adarbrents were under Piergeiron, partially because there was less land left to give.
Here's my current thoughts:
http://kanzenau.deviantart.com/art/WIP-Waterdeep-Noble-Lands-641940191?ga_submit_new=10%253A1477318700
The land is divvied up by 6-mile-hex so that it works well with ACKS. I've had to change the assumptions of ACKS somewhat, but they seem to provide a reasonable amount of income to the noble families. The average fully-populated 6-mile-hex might produce about 7,776gp/month for a noble family, while the farming families on it maintain a lifestyle of 2sp/person/day (2.5x better the ACKS assumptions).
As far as the land division goes, I'm thinking of taking up some more land on the way down to Daggerford, as I imagine it would have been used.
I don't think older houses necessarily would have more land. They may have more valuable operations and trade but not necessarily more area. I would look at the houses individual status, wealth and specialty. Obviously houses that are noted as having "extensive" holdings, would necessarily own more land about the metropolist. HOwever house age I think is a poor indicator. Some houses could have very small holdings, say near Amphail, but have very high value assests such as horse ranches that cater to nobles and knights, etc. Think race horse stables.
That's just an example.
Also need to take into account business dealings and the rise and fall of the relative fortunes of the differing houses. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 10 Jan 2017 : 16:52:30
For those who may be interested, I'm still ticking along on this, and I found this quote from Ed among the saved data from the old mailing list, as a way to feed populations:
quote:
The multiply yields/purge blights/banish molds-and-infestations/slay vermin spells Chauntea has given her clergy. These have never been properly covered in print because of space reasons (the same reason you haven't seen Goldenfields properly). When we do have product space, food-growing and harvest lore just isn't as "adventure-exciting" as other material. My original players can tell you, though, from vivid play experience in the 'home' Realms campaign, of their power and of the influence wielding them gives Chauntean clergy in all frontier/newly/lightly settled areas...and hence, the behavior (nurturing gardens, aving seeds, establishing extensive root cellars, various methods of food preservation, etc.) Chauntean clergy can force on folks in areas like the Savage Frontier.
These magical expand-yields forces are in addition to the tinkerings of mages already established in the game (why we have the bulette, etc.). So the land provides plentiful bounty...hence all the monsters (they all had to grow up to be this big and that fearsome, after all).
|
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 26 Oct 2016 : 07:12:35
I've updated the land distribution on deviantart to include the Duchy of Daggerford.
http://kanzenau.deviantart.com/art/WIP-Waterdeep-Noble-Lands-641940191?ga_submit_new=10%253A1477461674&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1
I plan to increase the minimum land given with noble titles to 3 laethes (3x 6-mile-hexes, or just about 95 or so square miles. I'll also expand the territory of some of the older houses so that more of the land is used up.
This addition of about 1,000 square miles to Waterdeep's territory allow for a less dense population: A drop from about 152/sq mi to about 135/sq mi. If these families were still on 20 acre farms, that would leave about 15% of every hex (about 5 square miles) free for other things.
I'm considering expanding even further, to the region south of the Forlorn Hills and about the ridge there. About another 10 hexes (or ~320 sq mi) would drop the overall population density to 118/sq mi. At 20-acre plots that would leave 26% of the average hex (about 8 sq mi) for other things, such as monstrous lairs, haunted ruins, etc. The more I think about it the more it appeals to me.
Edit: This would also leave more room to move with increasing population densities in certain areas. For instance, the Thongolir land in the lower Dessarin Valley might have a huge population, close to the City and in a fertile valley - say as high as 160/sq mi.
At the other end of the spectrum, Adarbrent lands, the most recent land given and probably the most tenuous, might only have a population of 76/sq mi (and potentially much lower). These people would populate less than half the hex on 20-acre plots, whereas the rest would be unfarmed wilderness. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 25 Oct 2016 : 01:47:30
Here's some more detail on the workings. I figure that I spent a lot of time researching all this, so this might help someone with their own project in the future. Mistakes might get picked up too. Again, this is just me posting from my notes, so apologies for the shorthand. Hopefully this will interest someone.
The overall goal of this was to have farmers living on a better wage than what is implied in ACKS, while retaining ACKS assumptions, and fitting them into the Waterdeep region. It results in an increase in "living expenses" from 8cp to 2sp/adult/day. Each family also produces enough to pay their Lord (usually a Noble House) as much as is assumed by ACKS, to make sure ACKS can be used for other parts of the game.
Revised calculations per MDME:
1 square mile can support 180 people (more if magic is used), including villages, roads, crops, the whole bang.
I originally calculated this as per 100 people on the land (20 families), and 80 people not on the land, but this isn't necessarily the case. And in fact, per the "90% rural, 10% urban" rule, it's unlikely.
Area required for winter population of 1,347,840 / 180 = 7,488 square miles. This is sustainable! It is 94% of the available 8000 sq mi of plains in the area. (Sword Mountains to Forlorn Hills to Delimbiyr Route to the Sea of Swords)
Area required for summer population of 1,878,484 / 180 = 10,436 square miles. Even this is close! It is 130% of the available 8000 sq mi.
The larger population doesn't even have to be sustainable: Waterdeep has fishing and imports too! Not to mention the increased production power of Goldenfields.
MDME Population Density:
Unclear if stated max of 120/sq mi is taking TOTAL land, or just arable land.
This could be based on France, the arable land of which is said to be 63.1% of the country in 1961 (data.worldbank.org). That would mean the oft-stated 105/sq mi density of France, was actually 166/sq mi on the arable parts. This 166/sq mi is the "90% rural" pop, supporting an extra 18 people to live an urban lifestyle, and supporting a total of 184/sq mi of arable land. This is in line with the ideas above.
Family needs 10 acres to be self sufficient, medieval average might be around 20 acres?: Wikipedia (unsourced):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_field_system
Medieval Manors also stands by 20-40 acres, and free yeomen would have 30 on average, so I think tenants on 20 seems accurate.
If this is taken as true, at 1 family/20 acres, there are 32 families/sq mi. 32x5 = 160 people/sq mi on the arable land, which is in line with the France figures above.
Application to Waterdeep:
1,347,840 over TOTAL area (10,500 sq mi) is calculated at 128/sq mi. This is more than medieval France (122%). To be equivalent, would need 12,500 sq mi, but 128/sq mi is within the realm of what is believable.
1,215,179 over AGRICULTURAL area (8,000 sq mi) is calculated at 152/sq mi. This is less than medieval France (92%).
Waterdeep agricultural area was calculated from map as everything not hills, mountains, swamp, or forest, at 76% of total. The area of the UK used for agriculture was 81.8% in 1961, Uruguay was 93%! So this is far from unbelievable.
This works out to 4.2 acres/person. If a family of 5 is assumed (like in ACKS), this works out to 21 acres/family (about 152 people/square mile).
Historical Medieval Family Size
MDME does not take a stance on this.
ACKS assumes a family of 5, and multiple other sources have stated an average of around 4-5.
However, population demographics put kids at 30% of the population, not the 60% ACKS has them at.
The link shows a table and pyramid showing medieval population demographics, which by chance also lines up with the 3e DMG guidelines on how many kids are in populations (+10-40% of population).
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/medieval-population-pyramid.html
If we break this down into children 13 and under, "young adults" of 14-35yo, and "mature adults" at 35+, that's 29% being kids, 36% being young adults, and 35.1% being mature adults.
If 5 are in a family, that's each person being 20% of the family.
29% are kids (13 and under), so 1.5 kids in a family.
36% are young adults (14-35), so 1.8 young adults in a family.
35.1% are mature adults (36+), so 1.7 mature adults in a family unit: likely one of the young adult's parents.
For calculating adults vs kids, this is an average of 3.5 adults and 1.5 kids in every family of 5.
ACKS assumptions vs Historical Family Size
ACKS and 5e D&D crop values align pretty well according to the below link, so hopefully ACKS consumption calculations will approximate 5e D&D (and actual requirements - see the ACKS creator's notes via the second link):
http://blogofholding.com/?p=6667
http://www.autarch.co/blog/starting-ground-upliterally
ACKS family eats 45 gp/year. Man produces 80 gp/year off land of 20 acres (+10 fallow non-productive). Family total produces 190gp/year of income. So family eats 45/80 = 56% of what they produce FROM the land. The lord collects the other 44% as part of his total take (3 gp/month).
The Lord collects 12 gp/month in what they produce (land (farm produce and otherwise) and non-land) = 144 /190 year. (76%)
If this was all true, but we alter it, still keeping the ACKS monetary assumptions
ACKS production: 2 adults at 80gp/each & 3 kids at 10gp/each = 190 gp/year
ACKS consumption: adults: 2.3+1.6 = 3.9cp/day, kids: .75+.75 = 1.5cp/day = 12.3cp/day/family = 45gp/year
ACKS consumption of wealth produced: 24%
ACKS lord income = 190 - 45 = 144gp/family/year = 12 gp/family/month
Probable medieval family production: 3.5 adults & 1.5 kids = 295 gp/year
Probable medieval family consumption: 15.9cp/day/family = 58 gp/year*
Probable medieval family consumption of wealth produced, on ACKS model: 20%
Extra income from family = 295 - 144 - 58 = 237/family/year = 8 gp/family/month, purely because of the 3.5/1.5 family model, taking ACKS assumptions (eg. that non-farming adults produce the same income).
*Note: these yields line up with historical statements that a peasant family could survive on own on 10 acres (pre yield increases by Norfolk system).
Giving peasants better living conditions.
The ACKS 45gp/year model doesn't take into account taxes paid for protection (garrison upkeep by Lord), and liturgies and tithes provided. These sum to another 4gp/month (48gp/year) that is paid by the peasants, but is put back into them. So, the ACKS family actually lives on 90gp/year (8cp/adult/day, 3cp/child/day).
But, if we want our peasants living better, say at 2sp/adult/day (poor by 5e standards rather than squalid), they need to get 2.5x the income.
I only change this for adults, as the kids are assumed to not need more.
For the 3.5/1.5 family: previously (58food+45Lord)=103gp/year, now 74.5cp/family/day = 272gp/year.
We need to do this while maintaining the 144gp/year for the Lord. BUT, 4gp of this has already been taken into the peasant's lifestyle expenses via the garrison, tithes, liturgies, so thats only 8gp/month or 96gp/year we need to account for.
272 + 96 = 368gp/year = 31gp/month
368gp/year is 125% of the 295gp/year assumed above to be produced by the 3.5/1.5 family, so this requirement is not met under typical medieval crop yields.
Reasons for increased yield in post-Medieval period: Agricultural Revolution!
Norfolk crop rotation Gave double yield by 1750.
Half growth in output per worker 1600-1800 due to bigger farm size (Allen) quoted in Land, Labour, and Livestock - but other sources refute this, saying land growth did not actually affect yields/acre
Clark - England c1300 75% output is wheat, 93% of calories
Livestock raises yields
Natural history of Oxfordshire 1677 - better wheat crop!
Also, planting closer together may increase crop yields.
Source on Agricultural Revolution reasons for increasing crop yields:
http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-agricultural-revolution-timeline-causes-inventions-effects.html
Perfection of horse-drawn seed press (Jethro Tull modification to existing invention)
machine pushes seed deeper into ground, lose less to feeding birds
Large scale growth of new crops: potato, maize (post-1750)
Passing of the Enclosure laws
Increased land availability: use of turnips and clover for 4-field system reduced fallow land
More livestock: made possible because turnips/clover good for grazing
Improved crop yield:
more livestock = more fertilizer = better production per acre
end of little Ice Age
Brittanica,com:
In the Norfolk four-course system, wheat was grown in the first year, turnips in the second, followed by barley, with clover and ryegrass undersown, in the third. The clover and ryegrass were grazed or cut for feed in the fourth year. The turnips were used for feeding cattle and sheep in the winter. This new system was cumulative in effect, for the fodder crops eaten by the livestock produced large supplies of previously scarce animal manure, which in turn was richer because the animals were better fed. When the sheep grazed the fields, their waste fertilized the soil, promoting heavier cereal yields in following years.
Potatoes, oats, peas, rye is an alternate rotation (wikipedia), assuming potatoes are available.
Wheat to potatoes to barley to peas:
An updated version of the Norfolk four-course rotation could begin with peas or field beans, both legumes, to replace the clover, with wheat in the second year. Potatoes or sugar beet could be grown as replacements for the turnips, with barley, or in some wetter locations, oats, in the fourth year.
http://www.newhallmill.org.uk/display/crop_rotation.pdf
Assuming pretty much any rotation is relatively ok, but need at least one to be nitrogen rich.
Applying crop yields to get better living conditions
ACKS assumes 20 acres of arable land yields 80gp/year on a 30 acre plot (80gp/30acresland/year).
ACKS also assumes non-farmer production of 100% that of the farmer (80gp/year).
To meet the requirements of a "5e poor" family, the land needs to yield an extra 73gp (191%).
The Agricultural Revolution, involving Norfolk 4-field crop rotations, better fertilizer use, and better wheat crops, approximately doubled crop yields from 1350-1750.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution
If we do this here, the land is now producing 160gp/year, and family is producing 375gp/year (102% requirement for "5e poor" lifestyle + Lord income).
This is all assuming that this increased yields do not require greater farm sizes (debatable in literature).
20 acre plot instead of 30 acre plot
However, the above productivity was assuming a 30 acre plot (with the Norfolk improvements). There is only really room for 20 acre plots in the Waterdeep region.
2/3rds of the land means land production is reduced to from 160 to 106gp/year. Other adults still producing 80gp/year (as they are in ACKS). Family overall is reduced to 336gp/year (91% of requirement, requiring 10% boost).
Now we require a boost of 10% of not just the land, but total produce, to get to "5e poor". Alternatively, the land requires a 30% boost.
Improving agriculture on a post-Agricultural Revolution 20 acre plot through the potato
This was accomplished in the real world with the potato and maize crops.
Assuming maize has not properly taken off, since the Maztica supply was cut off, and bugs travelled with them per Ed, at some point in the 1400s killing off most of the maize crops (this last part non-canon).
This leaves the potato, which has 3x the caloric yield of wheat or barley. And, even better, it already exists in Faerun.
Assuming avg 4 crop rotation of wheat, turnips, potatoes, ryegrass (historical: wheat, turnips, barley, ryegrass)
Some families would make barley instead of wheat, and other things could also be in the rotation, but most families would have a potato crop every year as one of their 4.
With land production at 106gp/year previously, and 1/4 of that being changed to 300% yield, we now have a yield of 159/gp/year/20 acres. Adding on the other 2.5 adults at 80gp/adult, and kids at 10gp/child (ACKS assumptions), we get to 389gp/family/year/20 acres. This is 106% of the requirement to live at a "5e poor" lifestyle and pay the Lord the 12gp/month that ACKS assumes!
389gp produced - 96 paid to Lord & not returned = 293gp/year/family.
Adults (14+): "5e poor" requires 2sp/day = 73gp/year. 3.5x adults is 255.5gp/year
This leaves 37.5gp/year for 1.5 kids. ACKS kids requirements: 3cp/day = 11gp/year, so this is over double.
Kids (13 and under): 25gp/year/kid = 7cp/day/kids.
As a rule, this could be used to say that kids under 13 on average have the living expenses requirement of 1/3rd of an adult. They eat more than 1/3rd the food, but they don't less rent etc, so this pans out.
See the summary in above post for where I went after this. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 24 Oct 2016 : 15:32:28
For those interested, I've made a summary of what I'm working on at the moment. My own notes are far more detailed, and far more all-over-the-place, and this is just a summary I made for my own reference. I thought it might be of interest to some, but a cursory knowledge of ACKS terms may be required. The formatting was largely lost in the transfer from Evernote.
SUMMARY OF AGRICULTURAL SITUATION:
The Waterdeep region is made up of ACKS Marches or "Laethes" which belong to either the City or a Noble House. It is the equivalent of a 6-mile-hex. Laeth is an administrative term: in practice they're just referred to as "Tarm lands", "Roaringhorn lands", or "City lands". They are kept by the staff of a Noble Lord, or a City official.
The Laethes are then split into ACKS Baronies or "Harads", which are administered by reeves who report to the Laeth's governor (who may be the Noble Lord or City official, or a subordinate).
Harads are split into "yardlands" - an administrative division of 20 modern acres believed to be appropriate for one family to work. The concept of yardlands is used by the reeves to calculate the tax expected, and is not used in practice by farmers
A yardland of 20 acres (equivalent of 4.5 MCG ovals) is on average worked by a single family
A yardland is most commonly split into 4 "farundels" of approximately 5 acres (a bit more than one MCG oval), one for each crop type under the 4-field system. When farmers discuss how much land they have, they describe them in terms of farundels.
Farms in 1491 Waterdeep have two core benefits over medieval farms on Earth:
Advanced agricultural knowledge equivalent in parts to the 1700s in the real world
4-way rotations with nitrogen-rich crops are used, increasing the land used, increasing fertilizer through livestock that feeds on the nitrogen rich crops, the fertilizer increases crop yield
In the modern world & Faerun, these advances increases total crop yield by about 100%
The most common rotation is wheat, turnips, potatoes, ryegrass
Availability of the potato (not available in medieval times)
Has 3x the caloric yield of medieval-era crops
Increases the yield per year by 50% (on a rotational system where the potato is 1 crop)
This could potentially be a lot more if the potato became the main crop in the region
Families consisted of on average 5 people, 3.5 adults and 1.5 kids
An example of this would be two farms living next to each other:
One family is a young couple with a child, living with the wife's parents who worked on the farm before them (4 adults, 1 child)
The other family is a slightly older couple with 2 kids, and the husband's mother only as the husband's father has passed away. (3 adults, 2 children)
Comparions to ACKS:
Differences:
20 acre farms means domains are smaller if all else is the same, with greater population density.
Max greater population density is assumed to be 1,000 families/6-mile-hex rather than 780
Families of 3.5 adults & 1.5 kids instead of 2 adults & 3 kids
Increased agricultural knowledge leads to greater crop yields
Potato availability leads to greater crop yields
These benefits are reaped by the families rather than the Lord:
Families are 2.5x better off (adults live on 2sp/day instead of 8cp/day)
Similarities:
Compatible with monetary and land systems
Same Lord income - doesn't affect wealth earned by domain.
SUMMARY OF DOMAINS:
Laethes: the minimum territory a Noble Lord owns or City official governs.
The total population of a Laethe, on average, is 972 families (4,860 pop)
An area of 4 harads of 5 sq mi each, and a Noble's demesne of 12 sq mi
This is 32 sq mi total, or the equivalent of 1x 6-mile-hex
Governor attends to personal domain or "demesne" of 320 families (1600 pop)
This includes a hamlet of 74 families (370 pop / 259 by 3e standards)
36x Laethes will include a village of 120 families instead of a hamlet
Note villages technically calculate their income differently in ACKS, but ignore this for these purposes
Demesne has domain income of 4,516 gp / month
Governor gathers demesne income of 8gp/family/month (no vassal tithe) = 2,560 gp/month
Reeves gather "vassal income" of 3gp/family/month = (163famx4haradssx3gp)= 1,956 gp/month
Vassal income is in this case an abstraction so ACKS can be used
Governor actually receives 3gp vassal income + 5gp domain income from each Reeve
4x Reeves are each responsible for a harad (their "personal domain" in ACKS-speak)
they are responsible for of 163 families each (815 pop)
Reeve has domain income of 5gp/family/month = 815 gp/month
This is paid directly to the Noble Lord (or Governor if Noble Lord decrees)
Total domain income for the Laeth, if take all of 4 Reeves' income, and all of Governor's income:
4x815+4,516 = 7,776 gp/month (93,312 gp/year) on average
This is the same as 8gp/family/month for the entire Laeth
8gp/month = 12 (6 land, 4 services, 2 tax) - 4 (2 for garrison, 2 for tithes and liturgies)
This is assuming an average land value to the Lord of 6gp/month (ranges from 3-9gp/month)
Some Laethes will earn less from the land 3-9, and have to spend more on the garrison (2-4)
Worst Laeth: Poor land in the wilderness: 9 - 6 = 3gp/family/month = 2,916 gp/month
Best Laeth: Awesome city land = 15 - 4 = 11gp/family/month = 10,692 gp/month
These Laeth numbers all assume a full population of 972 families
4 Small Towns exist on special Laethes owned by the City (or a non-noble in the example of Goldenfields).
These exist at Undercliff, Goldenfields, North Elembar, and the Delimbiyr Route
500 families in the small town
3 harad of 157 families
LAETH INCOME FOR THE NOBLE HOUSES:
#65279;FR3E expectations for the average noble house:
Resource Limit of 35,000 gp (can find items of such wealth as in any large city)
Ready cash limit of 52,000 gp (as much coin as in a small town of 1300 pop (3e) / 1857 pop (w/kids).
Population about 30 nobles (IF the ready cash were distributed evenly, they'd have 1,733 available each)
Keep in mind the resource limit and ready cash limit in 5e are probably lower in 3e, as nobles have less cash.
The baseline "5e Aristocrat", which includes guild leaders, high priests, and politicians, is 10gp+/day. Nobility on average should be at LEAST double this at 20gp/day, and possibly as high as 40gp/day.
Taking the average as 20gp/day in the 5e era of less dominant nobles, this still places them in the "Affluent" league by ACKS terms. At 30 nobles, that would be 600 gp/day, or 18,000 gp/month.
Each noble house owns AT LEAST one Laeth, bringing them in an income of 7,776 gp/month. The average noble house would therefore need other sources of revenue to account for their lifestyle (as they do).
However, most of the noble houses would have at least 2 Laethes, bringing them in 15,552 gp/month - still requiring revenue from other sources, but significantly less so. If they have 3 Laethes, they have more than enough to meet their lifestyle expenses without other sources of revenue.
I would say that almost all noble houses would have 2 Laethes, and 2-3 other sources of income each bringing in ~1,000gp/month that gets them to the 18,000 gp mark.
Noble Titles and Demesnes
Upon the creation of a noble house they are granted a demesne of land by the Masked Lords (and Raurlor before them). Although the titles have been sold and resold, they have never been split.
This means that the restoration of noble titles by Laeral may have given back all the noble houses the rights to their original demesne. This essentially grants them instant income: even if only one Laeth, that provides 86% of what is needed for their entire family to maintain a noble lifestyle at 10gp/day. With pretty much any other venture, they're going to get back over the line. And many noble houses would have the equivalent of 2 or more Laethes.
Newer noble houses would have been granted demesnes further away from Waterdeep City, purely because the land there was already granted to other noble houses. So Adarbrent may hold land out against the Forlorn Hills, for instance. At the same time though, space close to Waterdeep may have opened up when Zoar and Gildeggh lost their titles. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 24 Oct 2016 : 15:26:34
I agree that it makes sense for the nobles to own the land, and the peasants to pay them rent, but not be all the way serfs. I've been working on a system of making this region work, through a combination of ACKS rules and looking at agricultural analogues.
I've drawn up a draft of the land I think is reasonable for the noble families to own. In my head, the granting of a noble title is associated with a land grant. The further in the past the title was given, the more land was given: the Ulbrinters were given far more land under Ahghairon's rule than the Adarbrents were under Piergeiron, partially because there was less land left to give.
Here's my current thoughts:
http://kanzenau.deviantart.com/art/WIP-Waterdeep-Noble-Lands-641940191?ga_submit_new=10%253A1477318700
The land is divvied up by 6-mile-hex so that it works well with ACKS. I've had to change the assumptions of ACKS somewhat, but they seem to provide a reasonable amount of income to the noble families. The average fully-populated 6-mile-hex might produce about 7,776gp/month for a noble family, while the farming families on it maintain a lifestyle of 2sp/person/day (2.5x better the ACKS assumptions).
As far as the land division goes, I'm thinking of taking up some more land on the way down to Daggerford, as I imagine it would have been used.
|
| Cards77 |
Posted - 20 Oct 2016 : 16:25:34
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
Maybe more of a share-holder situation, than a serf situation?
Not that there was a lot of difference (historically), but technically a 'shareholder' worked land that belonged to someone else, who got a percentage of the yield, but was still a 'freeman'.
yeah i wasn't implying serfdom. That's what i meant by "loose". I don't see it as a traditional medieval system. Those farmers would all essentially be renting the land. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 20 Oct 2016 : 15:58:15
Maybe more of a share-holder situation, than a serf situation?
Not that there was a lot of difference (historically), but technically a 'shareholder' worked land that belonged to someone else, who got a percentage of the yield, but was still a 'freeman'. |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 20 Oct 2016 : 15:49:48
I agree. All that money for the nobles has to come from somewhere. I could see a very loose sort of feudal system where farmers are allowed to farm the land that a noble owns in return for paying tax and a portion of the crops production, etc. If you read heavily in the waterdeep sources it mentions that the nobles have extensive holdings "outside the city". This extends up past Amphail and probably nearly to Daggerford. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 20 Oct 2016 : 06:21:58
I'm still working on this in the background, slowly tightening up the underpinning ideas. Eventually I'll get around to posting some form of finished product.
If we take it as an assumption that the "Waterdeep Environs" lands are indeed populated with farms, thorps, hamlets, etc, do people envisage it as a serf-lord type of situation, or a land of freemen? I was gravitating to it being a land of free landowning farmers, but upon looking into historical analogues, and thinking about the predatory nature of the wealthy, I found it hard to imagine a region where the wealthy (ie. the noble houses and the churches) don't own the majority of the land.
My current thinking is that the land around Waterdeep would be predominantly owned by the Waterdhavian noble houses, along with some of the churches, the occasional exceptionally wealthy non-noble individual, with perhaps guilds owning pockets here and there. These groups then rent the majority of their land out to farmers, who work on it and pay a tax or tithe back to the landowner in return. Land has the potential to be bought by anyone with enough coin - but in practice farmers can't out-buy these groups, and end up paying to use the land rather than owning it themselves.
Tax-collecting would be done by independent tax-collectors ("claws" in Ed-speak) who employ their own private enforcers. The noble houses then just hire the tax-collector, which avoids them violating their 70 men-at-arms limit.
What do people think of this approach? Any thoughts on land ownership in the Waterdeep region? |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 21 Sep 2016 : 07:37:37
Lastly (surely for reals this time), here's what a regional breakdown with 3 towns per region might look like.
http://fav.me/daih2vg
The regions are:
Northern Coast, Long Road, Lower Dessarin West, Two Rivers, Southern Coast, Amphail Province, Goldenfields Province, Darlund, North Elembar, South Elembar, Harpshield, Delimbiyr
These are placeholder names until I think of something better.
I'm thinking 3 towns/region for 12 regions is more manageable than 36 regions, and allows me to characterize them easier (and actually remember their character).
Meaning each of the 12 regions would contain, approximately:
3 towns of ~2,500 on average
18 villages of ~600
108 hamlets of ~300
648 thorps of ~73 (that I'd leave off future maps for simplicity's sake)
Different regions would vary by population, and ultimately by the number of settlements etc. Some regions may only have 1 (or 0 towns).
Different regions would also have differing relationships with the City of Splendors, too: for instance Waterdeep more closely guards the area within 30-40 miles of its walls - this means Northern Coast, Long Road, Lower Dessarin West, and Two Rivers districts might see better law enforcement and city interference in local politics. These areas would also likely be the most population dense.
Any 1 of the 12 regions would on average be home to close to 100,000 people. If the four regions above each were home to 125,000 (187/sq mi), that leaves the other 8 averaging at 87,500 people (130/sq mi). Admittedly, 187/sq. mi. is denser than normal agriculture could sustain, but with a hand-waved more fertile soil than Earth's + druids + magic, it seems fine.
From here, I'd probably put in some work defining each of the regions better, coming up with power-centres, thinking of what their relationship is to the City, etc.
Thoughts are always welcome!
Edit: one last thought: I would probably spread Southern Coast and Delimbyr regions out, right up towards Daggerford and Secomber. This spreading would make the gradient of settlements less artificial. I'd probably do the same for Amphail and Darlund to the north.
Edit 2: updated map file with the changes thought of in Edit 1. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 21 Sep 2016 : 07:09:31
Now really the last post for the day...
Here's that 1-mile-hex area around Waterdeep again, this time with that variation between towns and thorps added in.
http://fav.me/daih11m
If I still end up going with a campaign starting in the area around Waterdeep, I'll probably start planning it with a map like this, but leaving the thorps out (making it easy for myself by hand-waving them as farming satellites of the hamlets).
By this method the greater Waterdeep area could be broken down into 36 regions, each with one town being the centre of that region. Each town would have 6 satellite villages feeding into it, and each village has about 6 hamlet, each village about 6 thorps... and at the end each of the 36 towns feeds into the City of Splendors itself.
Meaning each of the 36 regions would contain, approximately:
1 town of ~2,500
6 villages of ~600
36 hamlets of ~300
216 thorps of ~73
Perhaps each of the town has a couple of (or even a few) "power centres", as per the 3e DMG, for instance a noble family and organization such as the Zhentarim. This would give a bit of character to each individual region, and help give an idea of how the smaller settlements run through trickle-down effect.
Alternatively, for less regions we could go with 1 region per 3 towns... |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 21 Sep 2016 : 06:44:59
And final thoughts for the day: here's a map of what the region might look like, broken up into settlements of sizes between towns and thorps (rather than just hamlets as described in the last couple of posts). Settlement:settlement proportions were worked out from MDME and other sources (roughly).
http://fav.me/daigzgm
Undercliff holds 21,000 people, or 1.7% of the "Greater Waterdeep area", or rural population.
Red are towns of average 2,500 people. They hold 7.4% of the rural pop (90,000 people, including Amphail and Goldenfields). There are 36 towns in total, and they're about 18 miles apart.
Blue are villages of average 600 people. They hold 10.7% of the rural pop (129.600 people). They're about 6 miles apart.
Yellow are villages of average 300 people. They hold 32% of the rural pop (388,800 people). They're about 2 miles apart.
Green are thorps of average 73 people. They hold 48.2% of the rural pop (585,779 people). They're about 1 mile apart.
Like this, there ends up being a settlement closer than every mile, but the vast majority of these are thorps, which are almost certainly a small cluster of farmer's homes. YMMV, this is just another way of trying to make this population work.
This is just another draft, in future versions I'd mess with the locations of towns and villages a bit more.
To see thorps and villages properly, you'll need to zoom in. DeviantArt doesn't let you zoom in enough as far as I can tell, so anyone with interest in this should download it from the site via their download button. |
| KanzenAU |
Posted - 21 Sep 2016 : 03:31:26
I've added another version of the map, this time with an overlay of some of Minsk Province in Belarus, another area with a similar population density.
http://fav.me/daiggmg
The overall layover is relatively low resolution, but between the villages of Faldorn and Zundbridge there's a higher resolution map. You can see on the image small "hamlets" in a similar distribution to what I've proposed. Note that even the "higher resolution" part of the map is still too zoomed out for the smaller settlements on there to receive names, but you can make them out if you zoom right in.
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