>>95063116
>major metropolis
Just give them any number really, Tokyo, for example, has a population of ~14 million. Use that as a basis. If it's some mega-city, say it's 100 million. If it's bigger, like a hive city, I'd say billions to even trillions.

>planet
Earth has 8 billion people, again, use that as a basis for your answer. If it's a world that was recently colonized or only has a couple of spaceports, the population could be a hundred million or less. If the world's only notable feature is a research base, the population might be a couple hundred (or less). If the world is just one big city, the population could be a hundred billion up to trillions, for example, Star Wars's planet Coruscant, has 1-3 trillion people.

>vast empire
This is where numbers start to lose meaning. We don't have a good frame of reference for how many people would live in a vast interstellar empire, so it's usually best to use other units of measurement. Personally, I'd use the number of worlds that are 'inhabited' by the empire. A small interstellar empire might have a hundred worlds, while the largest of empires might have millions of worlds under its influence.

In the end, how you respond says more about your world than the number you give. You COULD give your players the approximate population of your galactic empire by multiplying the number of inhabited worlds by the average population of each world, but numbers that big won't really mean anything to your players. Personally, when asked for the headcount of a population that big, I'd probably just come up with some flowery way to say 'countless'.

Back | Go to board

Board:

/tg/

Thread:

When GMing an interstellar or multiplanar setting, how do you respond when a player or their character asks, "What is the rough population of…