Settlements in Mythosa

The Mythosan world map and PDF show and document a number of towns, many cities, three metropolises, and one hamlet. Hopefully it is obvious that this is not the entirety of settlements in the known world; to show every village and town on the map would be major overkill and a lot of unnecessary work (and to be honest, I have no idea where every village or hamlet is; I add them as I need them). That said, there's nothing that documents the specifics of settlements in the context of Mythosa other than the general terms listed in the world guide. This post is intended to clarify that.

There are five types of settlement in Mythosa: hamlet, village, town, city, and metropolis*. On the world map, settlements are shown based on their size (relative to the scale of the map) or their significance. Given that, all the cities and metropolises of the known world are on the map. Regarding towns, the ones that appear on the world map have some particular importance (like Irongate due to its role in trade in the Ruinlands and Avellyn River Valley), but there are many more that do not appear on the map (some can be found in the world guide, such as Aldenshire and Fairhaven in the Ruinlands, but there are still more beyond that). Villages, as one would expect, are numerous, but don't show up on the map or in the PDF; they can be placed anywhere on an as-needed basis. The same applies for hamlets, though they aren't quite as numerous as villages (it's more difficult for smaller settlements to survive the myriad dangers of the world).

Basic settlement population and economic information is shown in the table below**:

TypePopulation (estimated)GP Limit / Available Wealth (GP)
HamletUp to 10050 / 250
Village100 to 500250 / 1,000
Town500 to 5,0001,000 / 5,000
City5,000 to 15,0005,000 / 25,000
MetropolisOver 15,00010,000 / 100,000

Specific population numbers aren't usually provided but the table above is useful for getting a general idea of how many people live in a settlement. "GP Limit" and "Available Wealth" are holdovers from 3rd Edition. Nothing more expensive than the "GP Limit" will be found in a particular settlement, and it is also the maximum amount anyone will pay for what the PCs may be selling. "Available Wealth" is the amount of resources available in the settlement - i.e; the PCs can't sell more than that much worth of goods at a single time. Assume it takes about a week for "Available Wealth" to be rebuilt.

I'll have a couple more posts in the future dealing with some additional economic and demographic aspects for settlements, specifically for certain scenarios that may emerge during gameplay.


*: It would be simpler to just use the standard "village/town/city" threesome, but I felt that the huge, sprawling, exceptional cities should have their own category (akin to places like Waterdeep, Greyhawk, Lankhmar, etc.). I added "hamlet" to cover those settlements that are little more than a handful of families and individuals living in a cluster of buildings. I could have encompassed those in "village", but I wanted to balance the low end against the high end (and odd numbers are more interesting than even ones; I may post something about my "groups of three and five" philosophy in the future).

**: I've refrained from applying too many specific details to the settlements since I don't find them significant to actual gameplay. It's more important, for instance, to convey the impression and feeling of a village or city and what might make it unique than it is to know things like exact population numbers (the PCs don't care if a town has 4,500 or 4,700 people in it) or mundane resources (these can generally be inferred from the surrounding geography).

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