Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

Nevertheless, the populations indicated in the Banestorm book, compared to the size of Ytarria, demonstrate a sparseness of civilization. If anything, Ytarria is more a "Points of Light' setting than anything else (which contradicts some of the premises of the book itself). Indeed, some of the information in the book conflicts heavily with the demographic and geographic realities of Ytarria. For example, Cardiel is considerably larger than France, but has a small population. It is in no way civilized or filled with farms with nothing to explore. With only 22 souls per square mile, it is quite empty overall. This makes Cardiel is a great place to adventure IMO: sea voyages, travel to the Muslim lands, wilderness exploration, bandits and monster hunting, urban intrigue. Cardiel actually has everything you need, despite the book alluding to it being a "boring" place. Add in some dark forests and rugged hills and you are set.

As for imperialism, humans never needed a reason to war with each other. A world without conflict would be a dull place. In any case, I consider the various regions of Megalos to be mostly self-governing, with their nobility doing pretty much as they see fit. The Similar to the Imperium of Traveller, as long as the provinces send their taxes to the Emperor, the imperial government lets well enough alone. This creates an environment ripe for border wars and skirmishes.

Moving on. Perhaps most of the land in Megalos is filled with monsters, or is not suitable for agriculture. Look at the vast areas of Russia and compare that to where folks actually live. Northern and central Megalos are described as wild and filled with dark and foreboding forests. Only eastern and western Megalos are described as being mostly civilized.

Rivers and waterways form the highways of Ytarria, and it made sense to me to populate those areas with the majority of urban settlements. I did sprinkle areas of habitation in out-of-the-way areas to add some variety. No doubt there is some special reason for their existence in those regions (for the GM to decide of course).

In the end, everyone is free to do with Ytarria as they see fit. Make the populations larger to reflect a more civilized continent. Treat the smaller settlements that I added as small towns vs large villages.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

I posted a small update on my blog. Some minor additions, nothing huge.

https://darebearsminiemporium.blogsp...f-ytarria.html

The empty plains between the Smoke and Makarem always bothered me [I hate empty space]. Rather than a large open space I thought that this area would be better served as something else: a plateau region.

On the second map I have added the topographical outline of a plateau which encompasses this area. It slopes gently from west to east, rising slowly until it almost reaches the Conn river.

The region is dry, with steppe-like conditions though-out, with a single large waterfall on along the north face. I envision this area being inhabited by nomadic horse tribes. The ethnicity is up to the GM. I have not yet decided if the plateau will be approachable from the east. Perhaps it ends in a ridge which is impassable except at a few locations?

In and case, a plateau region fixes a few issues IMO. The long Meglan-Wazifi border is now less of an issue, since it can only be realistically approached from the coastal region by invading armies. This is historically where most of the described historical battles take place.

The plateau also prevents Megalos from approaching Caithness from the south, necessitating their approach along the Conn river or along the Bronze Mountains.

Anyway, this central area now becomes a wild frontier, inhabited by whatever the GM can imagine.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

A better map of Tredroy would be pretty awesome. Especially with the river widths shown correctly. Just sayin'.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

Seconding the Tredroy map!

If the ideas you mean is about the plateau, I like it, it helps the history we know make sense, not that it didn't, just that now the geography is an explanation that was unknown before.

I think it is located in an area surrounded by so many things it may not be really untamed wilds, as people will make commerce and travel, even with a difficult ridge to cross, magic and raw stubbornness will create points of access, maybe not good enough for a big caravan nor an army but good for foot travelers and maybe a few for horses and small wagons.

This region may be similar to some Eastern European regions, slightly isolated by the geography it is a different kind of Megalos. I can see the Hospitalers pushing for a crusade against them as the Teutonics in the Baltic crusade.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

GURPS Tredoy already contains a half descent city map.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

Only if you divide the scale by five or so, which still leaves the Blueshoal twice as wide as it should be.

Check my math- which is always suspect- but according to errata:

That would imply about 1/5th the size of Paris, which hit a population of 250,000 around 1350. Paris in 1328 was only 440 hectares (almost 1100 acres)- that's pretty close to 1x1.75 miles. But the map in the book is 10x16 miles or so, which is a freaking humongous medieval city! That's seven times the size of Manhattan! And the map shows the Blueshoal as 5 miles wide!

So that whole map would have to be reduced to 3.4 square miles to be close to the right size... if you assume that rivers take up half of the area. To get a reasonable approximation, divide the scale by 5(-ish), but that still leaves the Blueshoal twice as wide as it should be.

Plus, it would be nice to add outskirts, a bit of outlaying farmland, and more points of interest. And just generally make it a nice-looking map, like you see on cartographersguild.com. In all seriousness, if SJG commissioned someone on cartographersguild.com to make a corrected and prettified Tredroy map I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat. Tredroy is supposed to be Yrth's Lankhmar or Waterdeep, right? It should have a good map. Example: https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...6&d=1370965744

Here is a map of Paris in 1380: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vid_Rumsey.jpg

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

For those following this thread I posted another update today.

The Wazifi city of Quazr as-Sawh is now located on the river Conn per the description in the book. Curiously, the map in the Megalos section of the book shows the city located there but other sources locate it on the coast where another unnamed town is located.

I have added another map with no trails, villages/small towns, towers, adventure sites and other sundry areas. At a scale of 24 miles per hex these locations would not show up at all on a regular map, being far to small to be of consequence.

Originally the smaller non-canon settlements on the map were supposed to be small towns, the number of which was calculated mathematically based on population totals and urbanization levels. However, in hindsight, I believe this was and is unnecessary. There are already enough towns and cities for characters to interact with without needing additional small urban settlements. These could be treated as villages of course. However, villages would not normally be shown at the scale of 24 miles per hex. If you have an opinion either way I would be curious to hear it. The continent is big and with only the canon settlements it does look rather "empty".

The capital of Cardiel is not Calder but currently, resides at Hadaton.

Additional small islands have been added in various areas. Most are far smaller than 1 hex. Maritime adventures are often overlooked by modern gamers, which is unfortunate.

Some minor corrections to roads and trails. Straightening out and other such sundry fixes.

Battlefields and farmlands have been removed. Needless clutter IMO. If you believe otherwise, let me know. The farmlands were done to show just how empty the lands are based on the population levels.

The Legend has been removed for now. The symbols on the map are fairly self evident. I will probably post one on the blog for those who need one.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

I have been thinking a lot about population levels and settlement patterns. There are innumerable sources for this material. However, I decided to go back to my roots and perused the D&D BECMI Companion Set. It has some good basic rules for running Dominions and it does go into hex map demographics at a macro level. I posted a new map to visually depict what I will try to describe below.

The Companion Set divides 24 mile hexes into Civilized, Borderland and Wilderness. The population levels vary according to the classification. Population is listed in "Families" (a family consists of 5 people). When raising armies I assume 1 able bodied man is available per family.

Wilderness: 10-100 families (avg: 275 people, 0.5 people/square mile)
Borderlands: 200-1200 families (avg: 3500 people, 7 people/square mile)
Civilized: 500-5000 families (avg: 13,750 people, 27 people/square mile)
The following is a breakdown of what I used to determine what hexes fall into what category. They are smaller in range than the Companion set. This was by design since I wanted a more wild and unexplored Ytarria (In BECMI any hex within 6 hexes of a city is Civilized and any hex within 3 hexes are a Civilized hex is Borderlands...this is a bit too much IMO).

Metropolis (Megalos and Tredroy): all surrounding hexes within 4 of the city are Civilized. All hexes within 4 hexes of a civilized hex are Borderlands. The zone consists of 37 civilized hexes and 132 borderland hexes. Roughly 1 million per hex zone.

Large City: all surrounding hexes within 3 of the city are Civilized. All hexes within 3 hexes of a civilized hex are Borderlands. The zone consists of 37 civilized hexes and 90 borderland hexes. Roughly 825,000 per zone.

City: all surrounding hexes within 2 of the city are Civilized. All hexes within 2 hexes of a civilized hex are Borderlands. The zone consists of 19 civilized hexes and 42 borderland hexes. Roughly 400,000 per zone.

Large Town: all hexes surrounding the city are Civilized. All hexes within 1 hex of a civilized hex are Borderlands. The zone consists of 7 civilized hexes and 12 borderland hexes. Roughly 140,000 per zone.

All other hexes: Wilderness. Exception; large areas of al-Haz and al-Wazif are populated by nomadic tribes. These areas should be considered civilized and or borderlands depending on their location despite containing no urban settlements.

Note: Swamps, mountains, desert, forest and hills can never exceed a Borderlands rating, no matter how close they are to an urban center.

Civilized hexes do not necessarily indicate the presence of urban areas. Well populated nomadic lands with no urban settlements could be considered "Civilized" for population purposes.

To test this approach I looked at Megalos and Caithness. Megalos contains 1 Metropolis, 8 large cities, 11 cities and 48 towns. Rough math for all those areas worked out 18.2 million souls living in the empire. I did not remove water hexes or account for hexes which would automatically count as borderlands due to their terrain type from the equation. I also did not reduce population where zones overlap across a border into other realms (typically the zones for cities in foreign realms overlap so it all comes out in the wash at a macro level). These reductions would have reduced the Meglan population numbers by several million easily and would bring the population figures well within the canon 16 million. Any remainders would be considered to be living in the wilderness in isolated settlements. The zones also match canon description, with eastern and western Megalos being largely civilized while northern and central Megalos are more sparsely populated. However, rather than reducing the population size for these unusable hexes I would likely make the assumption that the population in those areas are instead concentrated on coasts and other hexes in the zone.

Caithness consists of 2 cities and 15 towns. That works out to 800,000 for the cities and 2,100,000 for the towns. Canon population is 3 million. The country contains areas of tight civilization surrounded by borderlands and wilds.

Cardiel is interesting in that large portions of the interior are wilderness, with civilization concentrated along the major rivers and coasts. This allows many options for traditional adventures in the interior regions. The population for the zones is roughly 5.5 million, with the population of Tredroy split between the three adjacent nations.

Of course all of this is very generalized and done at a macro level. It is by no means meant to be a completely accurate depiction of population levels.

A new map is posted with "Zones of Civilization" to indicate how this all works in practice, with the inner band around an urban center being Civilized and the outer band being Borderlands. Using this methodology should provide a much better image of the levels of civilization throughout Ytarria.

It is not perfect, but it does provide a basis to determine where the "wilderness" areas could be found. To be sure, there will still be uninhabited areas even in civilized zones and bandits are always a problem in well travelled lands.

The opportunities for adventure still abound even in the heart of Megalos.

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

If I had the skills and time, I would be tempted to completely redo Ytarria using the excellent material in ACKS II...which is heavily influenced by early D&D as well. I look forward to checking this out!

(By the way, one way to go further with Ytarria would be to create zoomed in maps with 6mi hexes...that way your smaller towns and villages and road networks would be logically quite visible and important!)

Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added
 

Yes yes yes. 1000 times yes.

A few observations here:

1. This makes it sound like the numbers on Banestorm p84 may be...reasonable? I swear that we've had discussions (upthread even) that these are way too low. BUT using this technique (which is very similar to the more modern ACKS II system, though I don't know about the numbers), I think it shows that perhaps things aren't as off as is commonly believed?

2. Would it be possible (at some point) to shade the hexes in some way to show them as Civilized, Borderlands, or Wilderness? The circles you created are workable, but they make things a little hard to see.

3. More please!