How do you populate the region your players reign?

[nakraal]

I am currently building up the region where my players will set their house. Its on the northern shores of the Saltspear, south of the Barrowtown and west of the Fever river.

Checking with the local houses I rounded them up to 5 direct neighbors (Dustin, Stout, Moss, Whitehill, Fenn) and 3 more distant (Ryswell, Flint and Ironsmith).

With the addition of the home house there is a total of 9 (7 minor - 2 major) houses in a region of 150.000 square miles or about 17.000 square leagues (game domains).

On game terms most houses will have 3-10 land domains for a max total of about 90 land domains to be owned from the local houses.

What about the rest? How do you handle this situation? They are just vast lawless land which none own? Do you create scores of landed and minor houses to add them up around those of the books?

[coldwind]

I tend to keep things like land borders as vague as possible for as long as possible.

Houses I do up. NPCs. Castles, keeps, and such get named.

But locations are kept pretty vague ("it's along the Riverroad, between Sarsfield and Golden Tooth.").

[Gurkhal]

When I will finally get around to play this game I'm planning on making it kind like it has been described above me find out what Houses lies near and make some new ones to handle it, but the exact borders and stuff will be vague. And to be honest I don't know how precise they were with measuring borders during the Middle Ages anyway. I mean they probably knew this village belongs to that lord, but the exact border between villages might have been a bit uncertain.

[DaimosofRedstone]

1. Medieval lands often were a lot of 'unclaimed' or 'unused' land surrounding small portions of used land.
Less in the west, more in the east with 'unused/uncultivated' getting less with time.
I rationalized that, especially for the North, as simply to little population to make all this land into cultivated settled land (and given that most likely the winter always hits the north hardest it might even eat up what little population growth there is in the north).
2. Even with that assumption the pure number of people (still) supposed to live their requires more houses.
Dream them up.
3. Keep it local. A house is interested foremost in itself and its immediate surroundings. Noble houses often try to consolidate their territorial possesions in a small area instead of having them scattered over the whole realm to increase controllability.
Of interest to your house will be their immediate neighbours, their lord and the king + plus potential pretenders to their own land, the lords title or the kings title. EVerybody else is only interesting as a person not as a 'house'.

Edith says:
Caution. I often make the mistake of trying to model and describe every house in detail in case my players would choose to interact with it. Do not do that. It steals a lot of time and energy as well as flexibility. Now i only sketch them using clichees (clichees are great; your players know roughly what to expect but they can still be played for a twist or great reveal) and flesh them out when and if the players really take an interest (especially since i usually have some weeks between games).

[coldwind]

To expand on how much detail I give - typically I stick to the "Appendices" format (used at the back of each book) - a few sentances about the house, and the a list of important characters, usually with a title, position, or ibteresting fact. Details only come if I expect PCs to interact with them.

If you want concrete examples, some links to NPCs/Cast for several of my PbP games:

A Tourney of Gulls - http://www.enworld.org/forum/rogues-gal ... cters.html
A Reign of Gold - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=167378
Beneath the Storm - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=160995

[Eisen]

You could also make up a few minor NPC houses in the area if you think the major ones in the guide are too far away. The can be friends, rivals, foes ect. Whatever will suit your campagin

[Gurkhal]

You could also make up a few minor NPC houses in the area if you think the major ones in the guide are too far away. The can be friends, rivals, foes ect. Whatever will suit your campagin

I totally agree in that you'll have to write up several minor Houses as otherwise Westeros will be pretty empty. Hell, just for my game I'm writing up both minor and major Houses to boost the numbers available and as a example I'm giving the Boltons eight bannermen Houses of petty lords, Manderly seven and Karstark five and Hightower close to fifteen or so. Most of these will only be given a line or two but can be flesh out later on.

Or is it just me who is going over the top?

[Nirnaeth]

To expand on how much detail I give - typically I stick to the "Appendices" format (used at the back of each book) - a few sentances about the house, and the a list of important characters, usually with a title, position, or ibteresting fact. Details only come if I expect PCs to interact with them.

If you want concrete examples, some links to NPCs/Cast for several of my PbP games:

A Tourney of Gulls - http://www.enworld.org/forum/rogues-gal ... cters.html
A Reign of Gold - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=167378
Beneath the Storm - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=160995

Great idea. I'm in the process of creating the players' House and just going with a couple vague lines will dramatically improve the creation process. For our House it went with one line about how the Lord had lost the use of his legs in a battle in the Greyhoy rebellion, and from there we expanded on how he lost the family's Valyrian steel blade in battle. Then we decided he had actually lost the sword when he was in a brothel during the war, and was trying to pretend it happened during battle. Great fun

EDIT: Phone typos + swerving bus, great fun.

[Gurkhal]

To expand on how much detail I give - typically I stick to the "Appendices" format (used at the back of each book) - a few sentances about the house, and the a list of important characters, usually with a title, position, or ibteresting fact. Details only come if I expect PCs to interact with them.

If you want concrete examples, some links to NPCs/Cast for several of my PbP games:

A Tourney of Gulls - http://www.enworld.org/forum/rogues-gal ... cters.html
A Reign of Gold - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=167378
Beneath the Storm - http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=160995

And I agree with the above poster that this is excellent. Well done!