Worldbuilding: How far should things be?

[Lackofname]

While this is specific to my current situation--see post two for the setting I'm working on--it's worth asking in general: when trying to go for some sort of semblance of believability, how far should things be from one another, geographically speaking? Villages fo different races. Ruins/forgotten things from places people actually live. How far should PCs travel from one thing to the next? Essentially, how densely packed should any general outdoors region be? And how distributed should things be, racially?

I know the answer is "whatever fits your situation/setting", but I'm looking for a general practice, a rule of thumb here, beyond my specific circumstance. What makes sense at first glance. Sure you can come up with any sort of in-world explanation for it, but players may never find that out. You're fighting against the first blush impression that it's contrived, neat and artificial. It's also exhausting to come up with an in-game excuse for every design decision.

For example, let's say Here is a Human Village, and Elven village, and a Gnome village. How far should they be apart? "It depends," you might say. But it seems a bit too neat and tidy that there are three racially segregated communities say, an hour's walk apart. Why are there three, and each are three separate races, than five human villages and then the elf and gnome, to show more of a distribution than it being so neat and tidy?

I run into this problem with D&D and its tons of races. How all the races (plus monsters, plus...) have room to exist all in one place, rather than crowd each other out. (Even without things like "how do you find enough mating pairs to keep this race actually surviving in this area...).

But aside from racial distribution, the core issue is still: how far should x be from y? And in one sense, distance and travel time doesn't much matter; if nothing interrupts the PCs, they get from Point A to Point B instantly by way of handwavium. Until it does matter. To quote the speed of Babylon 5 ships, "They move at the speed of plot." But when you've established that distance for verisimilitude, when they need to get back to town and warn things, a day's travel and an hour's matter, so making that decision well before you have a plot, can be important.

Because here I am, looking at some Pathfinder APs for inspiration and a sense of scale, and it's blowing my mind. One has PCs going on an expedition, and it takes them two months to get from start to finish. That feels crazy. Another has the area to be explored extensively, to be roughly the size of the US state of Maine. And I wonder, is that too big or too small, to cram full of stuff? I don't know. All I'm going by here is a feel.

 

[Lackofname]

My specific situation is I'm creating a setting that can either handle hexcrawl/exploration, or town building/diplomacy/etc. There is very clearly a Starter Zone, that has been intentionally, in-game, walled off from a much larger area.

And I don't know how big to make the starter zone. I don't know what makes sense, given the locales I want to put, how many races is believable (and how many villages each race should have) before the place gets too crowded, too contrived. How I can have ruins here and a dungeon there and the local tribes not tripping over all the adventure sites, how many "lost and forgotten X" is believable until it seems every few miles has something lost to time and foilage. Pf's Kingmaker has "one thing" every 12 miles, and that feels a bit too spread out, but I don't know.

The Wall is an important thing. It is a very clear landmark. I have always thought "The Wall should be 2 days travel through dense jungle from Home Base." Because I'm thinking the PCs will probably want to go back and forth between the Wall and Home base once they discover it, start going over the wall into the Serious area, etc, but still manage to get back to Home Base reasonably--and have incentive to shorten that travel time by carving a path/road, or negotiating with a river spirit for swift travel. I did some calculations using Kingmaker, and it came out that 2 days through dense jungle = 30 miles.

But then I look at other settings, and the distances they got going, and wonder if 2 days/30 miles is laughable.

I want players to explore. But the further distances are between Home Base and X, the less likely they'll dive into uncharted bush. And long travel times might make future adventures tougher, when time is a factor.

 

[Tonguez]

I tend to default to the England standard

England is 50,337 square miles (bigger than Maine and just a bit smaller than Alabama)
In that area you managed to fit Seven Kingdoms and a whole lot of ruined castles, abandoned abbeys, haunted manors, forests, outlaw bands, ghost dogs, spectres, fae, hags, witches and dragons.

London City covers 1.1 square mile (the old City as opposed to the London Metro Area)
It is surrounded by smaller Market towns (which are now part of Greater London) generally 8 - 12 miles distant from Central London
nowhere in England is more than eight miles from a Market Town

(8 - 12 miles is generally what a person can walk per day - 5 miles is what they can walk and still have time for the market)

Oh and as rule of thumb I tend to do each village has influence over a 1 square mile in which there can be 5 major holdings (120 acres each) eg
1 Village (includes crop fields)
2 Church
3 Farm (grazing and crops, supports Church)
4 Woods - 100 acre wood used by the villagers
5 Gnome Burrow (underground so can share the same geographic space as Woods)

 

[Lackofname]

@Tonguez when you say England, do you mean England+Scotland, or England by itself?

 

[Tonguez]

@Tonguez when you say England, do you mean England+Scotland, or England by itself?

just England (although the Seven Kingdoms did extend into Southern Scotland)

 

[MGibster]

While this is specific to my current situation--see post two for the setting I'm working on--it's worth asking in general: when trying to go for some sort of semblance of believability, how far should things be from one another, geographically speaking? Villages fo different races. Ruins/forgotten things from places people actually live.

Generally speaking, I would have villages spaced anywhere between 5-12 miles from one another. And human towns would be unlikely to be close to elf settlements unless they were near a border.

 

[Dioltach]

Any place you can reach and return from in a single day's normal walking (about 8-10 miles each way) is going to be visited fairly regularly. Anything that's further away, and would require an overnight stay somewhere, involves a proper "journey" and will be known, but rarely visited. Anything that's more than a day's walking becomes a serious undertaking to reach, and will have little interaction on the level of regular folk.

 

[Eltab]

A map of Middle Ages -era France or Germany or England might help you get a sense of distance travelled on foot.
In the case of England, there might be a map compiled from the information in the Domesday Book (AD 1096 - everything in the land that the King is allowed to tax). You could also create stats for some "typical" villages and towns.

 

[Jd Smith1]

The presence of ruins would depend upon history and politics. A castle or similar structure will be built, at least initially, for defense, and it is a major expense to build, maintain, and garrison, so they will be built on what would be a defensive terrain feature that dominates the road net leading to/from hostile nations. For that much of an investment to be abandoned would require the political boundaries to have shifted so far that the current owner would derive no benefit from rebuilding.

Villages and towns are built for a reason, not just spacing. In a medieval era the application of agriculture is primitive, so farming villages will be built where there is good growing land (not all that common), and the village can be protected. Other villages would crop up where other options exist, such as a lot of oak trees, which would provide valuable hardwoods as well as the means to raise pigs.

In a medieval era, you have to take the land as it is; there's no advanced fertilizer and mechanized means to clear and plow secondary land, nor a market for that much food (especially since storage is inefficient).

Read the histories of old cities: London, Moscow, etc. They came into being , remained in existence for centuries, and changed hands countless times because of their location.

Location, location, location: the rules of real estate are universal.

 

[MGibster]

And so far as ruins go, consider that many ancient structures fell to neither the ravages of time nor enemy, rather they fell to the needs of contemporary people who mined them for needed materials. You need to make some quicklime? Just pull the marble facade off the Flavian Amphitheater and burn to your hearts content. Why quarry those stones you need when you can just pull them from that ancient aqueduct that hasn't had water flowing on it in many generations?
On the flip side, if a great city was built somewhere it probably had access to water, other resources, or it was a trade hub of some sort. The Flavian Amphitheater didn't just go away after the empire went to hell. It saw continued use for entertainment purposes, it was a castle, it was a church, it was a source of building material, and all throughout it's existence it's been a tourist attraction. If a site was suitable for living, often times people just kept building upon the ruins.