Demographics

I've recently got myself a copy of The Great Pendragon Campaign. In hardback. Wow. What a book. And what an interesting game Pendragon is - the mechanics of character traits and passions, of chivalry and culture bonuses does appear to build the world into the system. No intelligence or wisdom statistics - I have blogged about the problem of playing characters that are smarter/stupidier, more charismatic/more socially inept, etc. than the player - but instead personality characteristics that can be tested, 'checked' in the Basic Roleplaying method of character development. Want to resist the seductress? Make a Chaste roll. Reading the GPC it is impossible to not be overtaken by an urge to get a game of Pendragon up and running, learn to handle the basics and capture the right tone, and launch into an 80-year dynastic campaign.

However, what I want to bring to the attention of anyone who hasn't yet seen it is a lovely little utility that I found while browsing outwards from one of the excellent Pendragon fan-pages: Brandon Blackmoor's Domesday Book. If you are building a homebrew fantasy world, this tool will generate some rough 'facts' of a medieval-level society, based on the population density and the area that you provide. Just two variables does make it a little rough, with no possibility to feed in differential trade or resource levels, but it provides some good guidelines to avoid building overpopulated, overdeveloped, impossible to feed, faux-medieval societies.

Of course, if you find yourself a copy of the GPC, and it is now 'print-on-demand' at RPGDriveThru, you don't need to do very much world-building at all...