Quote:
Originally Posted by ajardoor
Hmmm, you do have a point, but...
"The New York City" is a bit of hype. An exaggeration. It is a hub of trade and travel, but crossing planar borders also makes it more risky than simply staying on Earth. Likewise, the market for magic has a bit of a hump - it's generally costly for magicians and those buying.
Also, I'd forgot to mention the outer planes were only discovered in the mid-80's, so the city is very old or established as it could be.
Nevertheless, how much higher should the population be, you think? Compared to real world TL8 cities of similar reputation and wealth, how much bigger?
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Personally, I'd add at least 1 zero - Ballpark minimum estimate, according to your description, the driving economic employers/forces are
Big University - Harvard has 16000 employees (and 22000 students ) - round up to 20000 for this place
Corporate HQ's Plural - How many & How big? Amazon has 40000 employees in Seattle. Call it 100000 as a placeholder for multiple corporations.
"Biggest Enchanted Item Market in the Outer Planes" - Again, this is very campaign dependent - but call it at least another 20000 directly employed.
So that is 140000 people directly employed. Supported service employment (teachers, sewer-workers, house-cleaners, restaurants, whatever) at a minimum another 140000 (this is a guess, it could be a much larger number). So a minimum of 280,000 employed. Assume an employment rate of 66.6% gives another 140000 unemployed for various reasons adults, for a 420000 adults. Add a 25% for kids.
Minimum Population of 525000. Could obviously be a lot larger - it really depends how much inter-planar trade you actually have going on.
Also, a "Free City" in a TL8 culture that only discovered the "outer planes" in the last 40 years? How many major trading port free cities can you think of in the modern world (I can only think of Hong Kong and it's not independent in any real sense)? How many combat divisions do it's neighbors have on it's borders to contain potential outer-planar problems? How many does the city have to retain it's independence (note that these people would count as directly employed in the above estimate).