Demoland Demographics

Continuing from here.

I think there are still some issues in interpreting numbers and percentages. After all, as attractive as it could be, I'm not attempting to build a steady state system, which never changes. Instead, this should be reactive and on-the-fly, providing a baseline for the players to interact with.

In the previous post, I developed a model for character levels that might be encountered. In this post, I'll apply that equation directly to the towns in Demoland, but with a few caveats.

city	pop	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Llen	698	469	154	51	17	5	2	1
Betryn	698	469	154	51	17	5	2	1
Cadewin	798	536	176	58	19	6	2	1
Gerlin	2295	1541	507	167	55	18	6	2	1
Derl	2893	1943	639	210	69	23	7	2	1
Andox	5587	3752	1235	406	134	44	14	5	2	1
Ffith	1397	938	309	102	33	11	4	1
Norys	499	335	110	36	12	4	1
Malis	2694	1809	595	196	64	21	7	2	1
Kenor	599	402	132	44	14	5	2	1

Firstly, I haven't taken a look at age distribution yet. I think this is an interesting aspect and I'll be tackling it later. But age and level taken together are not so simple. It would be laughable to encounter a Level 5 child of a mere eight years old, and yet the system would allow for such a possibility if I simply multiplied the distributions (as I plan to do with class distribution and racial distribution). If (for example) 10% of all population are children, and there are 100 Level 5s in a city (requiring about 40,000 people total), then is at least 1 a child?

This does a gross injustice to the science of statistics, but I must keep my model simple somehow.

And yet there must be room for true diversity. It doesn't matter if there's one dwarf in a town of a thousand people - he might just be the sole Level 6. It's rare, yes, but the system must allow for the possibility.

Hence the difficulty. These posts, while useful for testing the model, only give the most normal, steady-state situation. A true encounter "table" (really, it's an encounter model) could include the Level 6 dwarf, but discourage the Level 5 child. This is the ideal. But I'll work on age later.

One way to think about this order is that it's emergent, not determinant. The Level 8 does not ensure or build Andox: he is there because Andox will have a Level 8. The numbers are retroactive.

I could have a population "generator" that makes a separate roll for each person. It's a simple enough calculation to do with Python. That would make, say, Llen and Betryn different (currently, they are the same because they have the same population).

		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Llen	698	466	146	61	13	10	5	1
Betryn	698	454	155	55	21	8	3	1	1

Hm. That's way better. However, it takes a bit more elbow grease to implement in Excel. However, it can totally be done. I leave the implementation as an exercise to the reader.

Ultimately, I think what I'm building is a context and location aware NPC generator. But it should also give direction to the DM about what type of place this is. If the $k$ value remains fixed, then this becomes a matter of thinking about how different levels are stratified in differently-sized populations. And if we want the Level 7 guy to help us, we've got to go here (and not there) to find him. I think this will be richer once the classes are added, since it's constrained by geography and the trade network, and not merely a function of population.

Lots to learn. Lots to think about.