This is a same scale map comparison of Texas vs. Europe. I think it might surprise a lot of people (it did me).

Texas is just flippin' huge.  People don't comprehend really how big it is, and I wouldn't use that as a comparison point for most Americans, since most Americans also don't really comprehend how big European countries are.

Quote from: robiswrong;758228Texas is just flippin' huge.  People don't comprehend really how big it is, and I wouldn't use that as a comparison point for most Americans, since most Americans also don't really comprehend how big European countries are.

Yep, Texas is around 1200 klm to say Germany's 900 or so klm

Confused on where you are going with this?  European countries are roughly comparable in size to US states.  France and Texas are basically the same size.

There's a map I saw of the US somewhere where damn near the whole thing is shaded blue.

The blue parts are places in the US where, from some point in Texas, it's closer to that point than at least one point in Texas.

I believe the point alludes to how much driving American designers are used to nowadays and how that skews distances to rather unreasonable pre-industrial distances.

Remember, our hobby is at least 15-20 years separated from USA's National Highway project, where great byways crisscross the land with at least 4 and 6, 8, and 10 lanes being not uncommon. Those who created these games were saturated in a world where hopping on the road to truck 40+ miles was becoming an average commute. Nowadays rural to ex-urban areas do that or double for fucking groceries.

If this hobby was created in the 1920s through 1940s I imagine distances would be related by the average streetcar on through to sleeper car train distance. What we sometimes unfortunately have are freeway and airplane distances tenuously attached to medieval settings. Note how readily available skipping over into the next exotic culture, let alone the next country, is taken as standard (i.e. blasé cross-pollination of cultures, races, and tech levels with no appreciable respect to distance; egalitarian cosmopolitan everything, parties, towns, and country).

I wouldn't say pre-industrial. The Romans had a very impressive road system, and was one of the reasons they had their empire.

I'd say it was fairly system to the US road system. Mile markers, rest stops every 15-20 miles or so.

There is a thing called a Tabula Peutingeriana, basically it was a map of the Roman road system. The picture of it is huge

Quote from: robiswrong;758233There's a map I saw of the US somewhere where damn near the whole thing is shaded blue.

The blue parts are places in the US where, from some point in Texas, it's closer to that point than at least one point in Texas.

Ok, I just had to google it...

I couldn't find something blue but was it this?



http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/whats-closer-to-texas-than-texas-is-to-itself/360433/
http://yestotexas.com/a-map-the-finally-shows-how-big-texas-is/

Yes they did. Did they think absolutely nothing about commuting 20 to 80+ miles roundtrip to get groceries though? No.

A good phaeton on roads or good boats along well-traveled sea lanes makes distances shorter — they are still nothing to our modern daily lives.

I'm lucky that I only have to travel 3+ miles roundtrip to get gallon/s of milk, and it is a thoughtless task of less than 8 minutes. People even today travel that repeatedly for water and lose hours. One's a menial task, another's a taxing chore. Scale matters.

That you couldn't possibly carry enough rope?

I guess the basic question is, "Is the adventure about the journey or the destination"?

You could have an entire campaign about travelling from one end of the Roman Empire to the other.
=

Brazil is frickin' huge too. Or Europe's fricking tiny, I dunno.

At school they loved showing us this:

Quote from: Opaopajr;758241I believe the point alludes to how much driving American designers are used to nowadays and how that skews distances to rather unreasonable pre-industrial distances.

Remember, our hobby is at least 15-20 years separated from USA's National Highway project, where great byways crisscross the land with at least 4 and 6, 8, and 10 lanes being not uncommon. Those who created these games were saturated in a world where hopping on the road to truck 40+ miles was becoming an average commute. Nowadays rural to ex-urban areas do that or double for fucking groceries.

If this hobby was created in the 1920s through 1940s I imagine distances would be related by the average streetcar on through to sleeper car train distance. What we sometimes unfortunately have are freeway and airplane distances tenuously attached to medieval settings. Note how readily available skipping over into the next exotic culture, let alone the next country, is taken as standard (i.e. blasé cross-pollination of cultures, races, and tech levels with no appreciable respect to distance; egalitarian cosmopolitan everything, parties, towns, and country).

Ah yes, this I totally agree with.  Professional campaign settings seem to have no concept of walking.

Quote from: robiswrong;758233There's a map I saw of the US somewhere where damn near the whole thing is shaded blue.

The blue parts are places in the US where, from some point in Texas, it's closer to that point than at least one point in Texas.

Which just goes to show that Texas is just too big.

One of the reasons that the West was able to thrive is because there were so many geographical features creating natural boundaries within such a small area. People in Europe became very good at war. Wars innovate and spread ideas. People didn't have to go unbelieveable distances between "parochial" and "cosmopolitan."

This is only one of many reasons why Europe was the cradle of prosperity, but it's important.

Also: Texas is mostly empty. Even though it's the second most populous US state, it's still a ton of empty space.

For example, Texas has only eighteen times as many residents as the smallest state by area, Rhode Island. And there are plenty of wild spaces left in Rhode Island.

Come to think of it, most of the world is mostly empty in terms of human population. We have seven and a half billion people, more or less?  All those people could be squished into a cube one mile on a side.