[Gazetteer] Overview

[Thorf]

Gazetteer

How could we resist naming a section of the atlas after our favourite series of books?

The Gazetteer contains descriptions and statistics for every settlement in the world, providing comprehensive but concise detail. This section will also include the maps for major cities and important towns and villages. In addition to settlements, the Gazetteer also covers all non-natural constructions.

This section is largely a matter of collating material from official sources, distilling it into as concise a format as possible, and then deciding how to present it all. Putting all the information into a database seems like the most efficient way of doing this, as we could concentrate on assembling the data, and quite easily create a number of different formats for presenting it all. This was one of the major factors that influenced me to start the Mystara Database Project, and it might be a good idea to bring that project out of retirement for this section.

[Hugin]

Perhaps this would be a good section to include the Wonders of the World, revisited if necessary.

[Zendrolion]

Do you think this section is also going to have a list of the countries' population? If so, I see the dread demographic problem (i.e. the Notrion with 50,000 inhabitants issue) ahead...

[metal]

Just wondering........Are we going to include non-canon maps (fan created) maps of the cities and villages? Any excuse to draw more maps is good with me!

[Thorf]

Yes to everyone's questions.

Sheldon, that article is great! Yes, those would make excellent sidebar-style articles in the atlas, I think.

This section will undoubtedly include a whole slew of demographics. So yes, I'm afraid we will be tackling (or running away screaming from??) the demographic problems. I hope that we can get some help from our friends over at the Italian MMB community on this, by the way.

And fan-created maps of towns and villages are most welcome.

[Havard]

I certainly like the name of the chapter!

Havard

[Warwynd]

I have an article somewhere that Bruce Heard wrote that recalculated the population totals of the Bellisarian continent (sub-continent?). I'll have to find it and post it here.

[Hugin]

Is this article here what you were thinking of?

[Warwynd]

Yes. As a matter of fact it is.
My plan to make myself obsolete is nearing completion I see...

[Hugin]

Yes. As a matter of fact it is.
My plan to make myself obsolete is nearing completion I see...

Not at all. No one here is obsolete. However, we do strive for redundancy, in the interest of security of course.

[Warwynd]

In the interest of further redundency... I present this website that I recently stumbled across.
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Also, I have the economy spreadsheet referred to in the article above. I am writing a revised version of it though, since there were certain aspects that i was not fond of... more on that later. It is in Excel format and I will freely distribute it to any interested. The only finished version I have so far is the one written by Bruce Heard, however, and all content is his doing. When I finish my version I will make it available as well. (I will also make notes or forum posts regarding what changes I made and why)

[Zendrolion]

In the interest of further redundency... I present this website that I recently stumbled across.
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

I already knew this one; thank you, anyway.

Indeed that website offers the numbers to make up a realistic western-like medieval demography in one's setting. For Mystara, I feel that some numbers are simply too high (the population ones) - and note that I'm always critic toward canon's population figures -, while some are too low (those for generating castles and universities, for example).

Nevertheless, I'd advise to keep that website numbers as a useful guideline from which to start, and whom to compare what we came up with for Mystara.

[Warwynd]

Well said. I couldn't agree more. I use the basic D&D calculations for my own Mystara campaigns also. The revised population totals that I will be posting in here will be based on them and will make use of Bruce Heards spreadsheet. Even using the method presented in the Companions rules (and later the Rules Compendium of course) the numbers for many places are very skewed. I am simply going to post revised numbers that coincide with those rules and let the community decide whether to use the canon materials numbers, or what is posted in here.

The link I posted was mainly for those who would like to make a homebrew or alternate campaign setting or whatever and it can help easily generate more real-life similar values for population totals. It's a cool site none-the-less.