Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Medieval Demographics

In responding to a Swords & Wizardry forum post seeking input on a proposed character background profession generator, I looked around a little bit for some information on the web about medieval demographics and found two interesting sites I thought I'd share here. "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S. John Ross seems to be a well researched exploration of the subject, with some specific examples that nicely put things into perspective. Brandon Blackmoor took the data and put it into an interactive web page where you can easily break down your own fantasy campaign setting's numbers.

I've read some good blog posts on the subject of economics in folks' campaigns, and these new resources sync nicely with them.

What information sources or general inspiration have you used in determining your campaign's demographics?

2 comments:

Chris said...

I'm the antithesis of Alexius of Tao of D&D fame. He's a proper quixotic mad b*st*rd (in a good way) determined to model a global fantasy economy and demography; I'm a student of the hack fantasy "spiky mountains, wiggly river, settlements as required" school of mapping and demography.

ze bulette said...

Thanks for the link to Diana Wynne Jones' book, I put it on my to read list.

I tend to create my larger campaign setting as the players' actions demand it, being a little lazy and short on time generally. I can see how creating a world setting beforehand might lend itself to plot development/adventure creation though, so I'm going to try to give it more of a shot. Besides, I like playing God now and again.

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