Harry Potter: Magic boat, magic train, brooms, sometimes wizards just vanish

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MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

This is like all these hilariously low population numbers in D&D settings.

Like the giant metropolis of Sharn has something 200 000 people in it.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 06:11

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 16:50

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Hogwarts is also kinda depicted stupidly huge in the movies for only having a few hundred students, with a layout that doesn't really seem to reflect how the story is written, with a bunch of disconnected building. The marauder's map must be a pain to use on buildings over 10 stories tall.

Like there's room for a whole wizarding university to be there without the children ever meeting the grad students.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 06:42

AARD VARKMAN: May 17, 1993

What if the house elves are the grad students?

# ? Jun 2, 2020 06:46

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

MonsieurChoc posted:

This is like all these hilariously low population numbers in D&D settings.

Like the giant metropolis of Sharn has something 200 000 people in it.

200k is really, really big for the vast majority of human history. Paris only reaches 300k at the very end of the middle ages and was 20k around 1000 CE. London never reached 200k in the middle ages, Rome was 200k in in the late 19th century.

Thing with HP is that if you've got like 6000 people, what the gently caress are you doing with like, ministries? You don't even really need formal schools at 6000 people, it'd make more sense to have apprenticeships. Are they just doing that because they want to LARP as muggles? That makes no sense.

e: Maybe like British Magicians are like that joke about the soviet union: two thirds of the people are permanently employed spying on the remaining one third.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 07:31

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Barudak posted:

Fantasy authors, and frankly people in general, are really bad at estimating how large populations need to be to support various institutions and levels of society so Im not blaming her. She also never said hard numbers as I recall in the books so what ever else shes gurgling out from her bowels is even less relevant.

I think my favorite was the post apocalyptic sci-fi setting where an entire self sufficient agrarian community was capable of maintaining and upgraded fighter jets with a population of like 50 people.

I know I just like complaining about it and it's nostalgic because I complained about it even as a precocious little insufferable teen :v:

Scale is something that's just really hard to gauge in abstracts. I just remember laughing at that specifically though because I went and looked up cities in my home state with 6k populations and was like "lmao the wizarding world in the UK is the size of Madras?????" jesus at least they can gently caress their cousins in Culver :v:

Pick fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jun 2, 2020

# ? Jun 2, 2020 07:43

Sydin: Oct 29, 2011; Another spring commute

Bartimaeus is a lot better about it because mages few in number on purpose since they're effectively an aristocracy. Anybody with the knowledge how can summon a spirit and gain access to magic, so the mages in that series are much more about controlling availability of information and intentionally obscuring the source of their magic so non-mages are ignorant and easily cowed into servitude. Also unlike Harry Potter which waffles on whether wizards would be in actual danger if muggles found out about their society at large, Bartimaeus states clearly that mages only keep the rest of society underfoot by means of fear and if they ever did rise up at any significant scale mages would be toast.

The books are hugely different in many aspects but Bartimaeus has a way more interesting and nuanced take on "modern British society but with magic" premise.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 07:56

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 245 days!

Tulip posted:

200k is really, really big for the vast majority of human history. Paris only reaches 300k at the very end of the middle ages and was 20k around 1000 CE. London never reached 200k in the middle ages, Rome was 200k in in the late 19th century.

Thing with HP is that if you've got like 6000 people, what the gently caress are you doing with like, ministries? You don't even really need formal schools at 6000 people, it'd make more sense to have apprenticeships. Are they just doing that because they want to LARP as muggles? That makes no sense.

e: Maybe like British Magicians are like that joke about the soviet union: two thirds of the people are permanently employed spying on the remaining one third.

large cities go back at least to Uruk, with approximately 100k people. Rome and large cities of its time like Alexandria and Xian easily hit the 500k mark and had populations over a million in some estimates.

that remained the big leagues until the industrial revolution. london was around that size by the early 1800s and exploded to over 6 million by 1900. over 200k was common though, western Europe was a shithole

# ? Jun 2, 2020 08:00

Pick: Jul 19, 2009; Nap Ghost

Sydin posted:

Bartimaeus is a lot better about it because mages few in number on purpose since they're effectively an aristocracy. Anybody with the knowledge how can summon a spirit and gain access to magic, so the mages in that series are much more about controlling availability of information and intentionally obscuring the source of their magic so non-mages are ignorant and easily cowed into servitude. Also unlike Harry Potter which waffles on whether wizards would be in actual danger if muggles found out about their society at large, Bartimaeus states clearly that mages only keep the rest of society underfoot by means of fear and if they ever did rise up at any significant scale mages would be toast.

The books are hugely different in many aspects but Bartimaeus has a way more interesting and nuanced take on "modern British society but with magic" premise.

I thought those books were very good. almost too good for what they were.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 08:23

josh04: Oct 19, 2008; "THE FLASH IS THE REASON
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SlothfulCobra posted:

Hogwarts is also kinda depicted stupidly huge in the movies for only having a few hundred students, with a layout that doesn't really seem to reflect how the story is written, with a bunch of disconnected building. The marauder's map must be a pain to use on buildings over 10 stories tall.

Like there's room for a whole wizarding university to be there without the children ever meeting the grad students.

Hogwarts is maybe a touch more grandiose, but:

# ? Jun 2, 2020 09:25

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Yeah, when you're actually rooming and boarding several hundred students, on top of staff, and have sports facilities, greenhouses, extensive grounds, and magical creature pens and such, all the space requirements add up. And then there seems to be room left over; Hogwarts DOES seem implied to be oversized, even without getting magical bigger-on-the-inside effects involved, with enough leftover rooms to hide a few plot devices.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 09:52

Hunter Noventa: Apr 21, 2010

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Yeah, when you're actually rooming and boarding several hundred students, on top of staff, and have sports facilities, greenhouses, extensive grounds, and magical creature pens and such, all the space requirements add up. And then there seems to be room left over; Hogwarts DOES seem implied to be oversized, even without getting magical bigger-on-the-inside effects involved, with enough leftover rooms to hide a few plot devices.

I don't remember if this is fanon or not, but I think the implication is that classes are smaller for Harry and company because of all the murder that was going on.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 13:05

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Tulip posted:

200k is really, really big for the vast majority of human history. Paris only reaches 300k at the very end of the middle ages and was 20k around 1000 CE. London never reached 200k in the middle ages, Rome was 200k in in the late 19th century.

Thing with HP is that if you've got like 6000 people, what the gently caress are you doing with like, ministries? You don't even really need formal schools at 6000 people, it'd make more sense to have apprenticeships. Are they just doing that because they want to LARP as muggles? That makes no sense.

e: Maybe like British Magicians are like that joke about the soviet union: two thirds of the people are permanently employed spying on the remaining one third.

Ravenloft has hilariously low population, something like 6000 for an entire realm.

Sharn is supposed to be this huge magitech metropolis with giant sky-scraper-like towers. 200 000 is huge if you're going for medieval fantasy, but Industrial Revolution-era london had between 1 and 3 million people in it.

# ? Jun 2, 2020 14:08

Ghost Leviathan: Mar 2, 2017; Exploration is ill-advised.

Hunter Noventa posted:

I don't remember if this is fanon or not, but I think the implication is that classes are smaller for Harry and company because of all the murder that was going on.

It is outright said at some point that a shitload of Hogwarts' non-Muggle-born students know at least one relative who got murdered by Voldemort and his crew, and some entire families were wiped out. Said before, the irony being that Voldemort basically ensured that wizards had to start having kids with muggles or die out from inbreeding.