I am trying to create a home-brewed world but run into a problem when trying to create the map
Mostly I cannot figure out how towns and cities work as many worlds seem to have a lot of towns and cities but I can't seem to get how they come up with a high number that looks good on a map
Depends how in depth you want to get with it - in a fantasy world magic can be used to handwave away a lot of the logistical issues cities have, so you can just plonk them down anywhere and 99.99% of people will just roll with the world that you have made.
If you are the sort of weirdo that I am, you might be concerned with questions like "what do they eat?" and "where does the poop go?" If so, there are a couple of general rules you can follow to make the world have a consistent feel.
Cities need food and water. In pre-industrial societies, large metropolises generally appear only where they will have consistent access to both - usually this means on the floodplain of a river, often (but not always) near the coast. There are a couple of notable exceptions to this - for instance Constantinople/Istanbul had a complex system of aqueducts that brought water from 120km away, and stored it in enormous cisterns under the city. Classical Rome's size also was much larger that the surrounding countryside could support - this is because vast quantities of grain were imported from other parts of the empire, particularly Egypt - during the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the population of Rome also collapsed because of famine resulting from increasingly unreliable grain shipments. Depending on the level of magic/technology/development in your setting, it might be easier to have large cities than it was in the real world medieval/classical periods.
Towns will generally grow around a specific resource or function. This might be a market town, situated where two different trade routes meet or at a natural spring in an otherwise dry landscape. A port town might grow to service trade goods for a large city, further inland. Garrison towns might grow up around fortifications, to give somewhere for the soldiers' families to live. A mining town might be established at the bottom of a valley where many minerals are found.
Villages will usually appear in a rough web surrounding both towns and cities. In the pre-modern context, this is where most of the food to support the larger population centres comes from. In a world without refrigeration, there is also a limit to how far away it is practical to have farms as produce may spoil before it gets to market - places that grow crops will probably tend to be much closer to their markets than places that produce animals because livestock can be transported while alive.
Additionally, and depending on the level of development in your setting, you might expect things like coaching inns or waystations to appear on major routes, roughly a day's travel apart.
Hopefully that gives you some starting points to create your map.
I mean, Come up with them as you need them. If you only need a few towns then you only need a few. Only you will know how many you need as you start to make them.
It will be helpful Aside from basic logistic (food and water) I am more conserved with how many cities, towns , and villages
That is more tricky - there is no "right" answer. A lot depends on the scale of the map you are making, and what sort of setting and tone you are going for. I'm not sure whether this is a world map you are creating, or a map for a country or region that the campaign will take place in? Also, is this campaign going to be set on a wild frontier, or a heavily populated and settled region?
When creating a world map, I would only mark major cities initially, and then move focus to a region map for where the campaign will begin. In general, assuming you are using a setting where there is a fair amount of wilderness to explore (and to save you having to do enormous amounts of work as a DM) I'd suggest only having one major city in the region your campaign is initially set in, and perhaps four or five towns. I wouldn't bother with putting villages on the map at all, unless they are relevant to your story - you can always go back and add in more if you need them. The map should ultimately be in service to the plot - if you know up front that you are going to need ten towns, put ten towns in.
As killerwraith says, there’s no right answer. In many ways, it would depend on the map. If you looked at a map of say, the US mid Atlantic from a large scale, it would have Boston, New York, philly, DC. But there’s a lot more places in there if all different sizes, depending on the detail and how close in you “zoom.” And, really, it’s good to leave it vague, so you can add or remove places as the story needs.
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Hello
I am trying to create a home-brewed world but run into a problem when trying to create the map
Mostly I cannot figure out how towns and cities work as many worlds seem to have a lot of towns and cities but I can't seem to get how they come up with a high number that looks good on a map
Any advice
Depends how in depth you want to get with it - in a fantasy world magic can be used to handwave away a lot of the logistical issues cities have, so you can just plonk them down anywhere and 99.99% of people will just roll with the world that you have made.
If you are the sort of weirdo that I am, you might be concerned with questions like "what do they eat?" and "where does the poop go?" If so, there are a couple of general rules you can follow to make the world have a consistent feel.
Hopefully that gives you some starting points to create your map.
It will be helpful
Aside from basic logistic (food and water) I am more conserved with how many cities, towns , and villages
I mean, Come up with them as you need them. If you only need a few towns then you only need a few. Only you will know how many you need as you start to make them.
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That is more tricky - there is no "right" answer. A lot depends on the scale of the map you are making, and what sort of setting and tone you are going for. I'm not sure whether this is a world map you are creating, or a map for a country or region that the campaign will take place in? Also, is this campaign going to be set on a wild frontier, or a heavily populated and settled region?
When creating a world map, I would only mark major cities initially, and then move focus to a region map for where the campaign will begin. In general, assuming you are using a setting where there is a fair amount of wilderness to explore (and to save you having to do enormous amounts of work as a DM) I'd suggest only having one major city in the region your campaign is initially set in, and perhaps four or five towns. I wouldn't bother with putting villages on the map at all, unless they are relevant to your story - you can always go back and add in more if you need them. The map should ultimately be in service to the plot - if you know up front that you are going to need ten towns, put ten towns in.
As killerwraith says, there’s no right answer. In many ways, it would depend on the map. If you looked at a map of say, the US mid Atlantic from a large scale, it would have Boston, New York, philly, DC. But there’s a lot more places in there if all different sizes, depending on the detail and how close in you “zoom.”
And, really, it’s good to leave it vague, so you can add or remove places as the story needs.