1) By what % has the population of Krynn reduced by, and what was the population of Ansalon in the days of the WotL?
2) With several nations seeing human settlement for the first time (Nightlund, Qualinesti) and most cities having been cleaned out (Flotsam, Palanthas, Daltigoth, Haven, etc) what are you doing differently to rebuild each of these places?
Originally posted by ferratus
1) By what % has the population of Krynn reduced by, and what was the population of Ansalon in the days of the WotL?
Well, I don't know if anybody could give you a good estimate on %-age drops, mostly because I don't know if we have actual figures on how many people Ansalon really has.
Now, I like to think that the pop. of Ansalon pre-Cataclysm is comparable to that of pre-Black Plague Europe.
The Cataclysm would cause a similar loss in the number of people (25% iirc in Europe).
However, unlike Ansalon, Europe didn't have the death and destruction on the scale that Ansalon has seen since the Cataclysm.
So, while Europe's population rose, I would guess that Ansalon's has stayed rather consistent over the last 400 years.
Originally posted by silvanthalas
Well, I don't know if anybody could give you a good estimate on %-age drops, mostly because I don't know if we have actual figures on how many people Ansalon really has.
Figures have never been established, no. I think your European population comparison is fairly accurate, although one imagines that geographical upheavals on the level of what occured in Ansalon during the Cataclysm could have wiped out even more than a quarter of the population. All of Istar was wiped out, for example, and mountains and seas were formed all over the place. Plus, all of the clerics had vanished, so there wasn't any hope of healing the injured or dying.
I rather liked Ansalon as being more roomy than the population would indicate. The setting had a distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it with the beginning of the modules, with many people knowing very little about anything outside their own villages. This had a significant affect on the nature of the events that unfolded, quite unlike the mass population of the Forgotten Realms (which seems to be somewhat unsupported by agriculture and resources...)
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
I rather liked Ansalon as being more roomy than the population would indicate. The setting had a distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it with the beginning of the modules, with many people knowing very little about anything outside their own villages.
Yeah, but if we have that flavour, it directly impacts with the way we are doing things.
For example, take Qualinesti. If we have 50,000 people emigrating to that place within a year or two, Ansalon isn't so roomy anymore. Same with Nightlund. Then we've got all these cities to rebuild. With the exception of Tarsis and Gwynned, there is probably no city that hasn't been described as having a reduction of population.
Now, I need a massive immigration to Flotsam to make it a city of slums, shanty towns, and tenement buildings. I'm aiming for about 7,000 people. Enough to make it crowded in its crumbling walls (since Flotsam was never a large place) and not a small town where everyone knows everybody.
However, if we are going to have a post-apocolyptic feel, we certainly can't come up with 5,000 people for each city. Granted, most places won't need it like Flotsam does, but it is something we want to keep in mind.