Looking for advice on size of a continent.

[Dr Mushroom]

My campaign is set on a continent called Andoras. Within this, there are three nations: Mithradah, a military state in the frozen north, Artur, the largest country, a dying empire, constantly relying on its neighbour Chard to defend it, both from barbarian raiding parties, from a nearby island, and from the threat of war with Mithradah. I would like travel to any one country to be reasonable for a standard party of PCs starting in the capital of Artur (roughly the middle of the whole continent, slightly to the south-east).

How big should I make the continent overall to make travel between countries feasible? I'd envisioned something very large, but now I'm realising that it would have to be about the size of Ireland.

What do you think?

[Logic]

It depends on how long you want it to take to travel between countries. If you want the PCs in any given country on any given day, then no point should be no more than 100 miles from the ocean. Unless the entire campaign takes place near the triple border region. Then you can expand the continent out as far as you want.




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[TheStranger]

Yeah, you end up with pretty small countries if you want it to be feasible to travel from any point in one to one of the others. By way of example, England, Wales, and Scotland are three countries on a single landmass.

It does, however, depend on how much travel time you consider feasible. If you're willing to handwave a month of travel, you can make your countries much larger.

Note also that there's absolutely nothing wrong with having your campaign on a landmass the size of Ireland. Make it known that there's some more world out there, have a few NPCs from away, but focus on the interactions between three nations on a medium-sized island. The only drawback is that this does kind of preclude substantially varied terrain and climate.

[Dr Mushroom]

I just looked at my map and realised that I didn't make this an island; it's a peninsula. Below the three countries is a stretch of land that eventually becomes a desert, so I can simply say that these are three fairly small countries at the tip of a larger continent, like Scandinavia. If I just handwave a week or two of travel the scale should be OK.

[sktarq]

assuming its not super montane or swampy, decent roads w/ ferries or bridges at rivers people can book pretty well. If pushing 3miles per hour for 10 hrs/day you have 30 miles per day. Say 200% travel distance by roads (which would imply no mainlines or government funded work really - 150% if that's present) for switchbacks, tacking off crow-flying-line etc that's 15 point-to-point miles. If a single nation is a 6 weeks deep (about max I'd think) from the boarders that's 630 Miles. That would be 1260 miles far end to far end of different nations. That's about the distance from Vancouver Canada to Ensenada Mexico (about halfway down the baja peninsula). So anything less than that is technically workable.

[00dlez]

Also bear in mind population densities when considering size, not just travel time/distance.

For example, having the capital cities of these nations be as large and sprawling as say, Waterdeep, is hardly plausible, especially with the desert nearby blocking a massive bread basket to support them.

I've used this site as a general guide when considering such things myself.