Sandpoint: The Biggest Little Town in Golarion


Rise of the Runelords


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I keep being amazed when running encounters in this town how much stuff is actually going on in a town with a population of just over 1,200. That wasn't much bigger than my high school, and just thinking that this town has:
-5 inns and taverns
-2 alchemists
-A theater that is competitive with the ones in Magnimar
-The Glassworks, which is known world-wide
-A major cathedral; An active thieves guild; A monastery; A shipyard
-Major relics of Thassilon

Yet, they don't have enough guards to stand up to a goblin raid. Admittedly, one that's larger in scope and organization than is typical. It just feels like the town should be bigger to me. Like 5,000 people or so. Anyone else have that feeling?


- Because of the fame of the Glassworks and the money brought in by smuggling, everybody else in town just hangs out at the taverns or theatres. No need to work...


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Here's something to consider: the town is on the caravan route to Magnimar and thus gets a lot of traffic going through. It was deliberately built there in part due to the harbor (which very likely is less expensive for ships than docking in Magnimar) and its location (and defensibility).

It also is within a day's travel for many farmers who would probably bring their grain and crops to Sandpoint to use their mills and then sell to merchants. Thus given the constantly changing population, it's not surprising there's so many inns and taverns.

As for the goblin raid, this was an attack by several tribes that were allowed to bypass the defensive walls - and in all likelihood there were guards up on those walls.

The Thassilonian relics just predated them. Magnimar is built around a huge relic after all.


The monastery has one monk, right? :D The theatre is the only thing that really strikes me as incredibly implausible.


Why? If you're in Magnimar you're one of many. In Sandpoint? The big fish in the small pond. And with a constant stream of new people, your fame becomes known everywhere while the bards in Magnimar are lost in the shuffle.


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In world logic: Sandpoint is a BOOM town, fast growing vassal city of Magnimar exploiting the rapidly expanding economic activity in Varisia which is only coming back into civilized trade after the long ago fall of Thassilon. So while the permanent population is only 1200, the transitory population is higher, and it's that transitory population in particular that justifies those businesses which are catching your eye.

Meta-game logic: Sandpoint is the kick-off location for at least one if not two AP's. It needs to have enough local diversity to provide a vehicle for most character creation/background events. A player should have to work really hard to come up with a backstory that cannot be worked into Sandpoint. If that did happen, that's work for the DM and the whole idea behind an AP is to reduce DM work at least on world building and adventure development. For RotR, characters tightly tied into Sandpoint are pretty critical. Also for RotR, Sandpoint needs to be small enough to justify/explain the need for "heroes" - it can't be so big that it has a guard force that can handle Nualia and her goblin invasion and hence has no need for the PC's.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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S'mon wrote:
The monastery has one monk, right? :D The theatre is the only thing that really strikes me as incredibly implausible.

Thing is... Sandpoint is based on my real-world home town, Point Arena. Which is about only 1/3 the population, and it DOES have a big theater.

And there's a fair amount of motels in Point Arena as well. Also restaurants.

Turns out, when you're a remote town, where even today you have to drive an hour to get to the first actual fast-food restaurant, your town DOES end up with a lot of those types of things in it.


Yeah, sometimes small towns can end up weird like that. Mine has a similar population, a theater, a massive used book store sprawling over multiple buildings, something like 20 restaurants, 8 of which just do pizza, and a place to buy wicker furniture. No clue how it's economically viable, but there you have it.


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James Jacobs wrote:
S'mon wrote:
The monastery has one monk, right? :D The theatre is the only thing that really strikes me as incredibly implausible.

Thing is... Sandpoint is based on my real-world home town, Point Arena. Which is about only 1/3 the population, and it DOES have a big theater.

How big is the professional acting troupe? Do they have a starring diva from L.A.? :D

I guess a more important question perhaps is how big the catchment area is. If there are 100,000 people within driving distance, that's much bigger catchment than just the town. It's not clear how big Sandpoint's catchment is; Varisia's populations seem sparse - I can see it is a Wild West boom town township with a theatre, but I'm not sure who the equivalent of the cowboys or prospectors might be. Sandpoint's main advantage seems to be the good harbour, so sailors are one element, but it's too close to Magnimar to be a really valuable layover. I've always struggled a bit with justifying the Sandpoint economy.

Edit: As there seems to be a lot of decent farmland nearby, I thought of salted beef as a possible export.


James Jacobs wrote:
Thing is... Sandpoint is based on my real-world home town, Point Arena.

So when do we get stats for the Sandpoint Mountain Beaver?


Funny thing about small towns and business that seems to do well in spite of size.... when there isn't a chokehold on good real estate - rents are cheap (or even the business is paid for) and so the overhead is nil compared to in a big city.

The cost of rent can be 30-40% of operating costs (or more) for places where space is at a premium.


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I only just bought it, and I thought exactly the same thing as the OP.

Firstly, the location seems a bit odd to me. Medieval towns tended to be quite close together: you need a good flexible supply of labour for things like the tannery and glassworks, so you need to be close enough to the next big town so that workers can freely move from one to the other. You also need to be close enough to effectively trade perishable goods (although I guess may every trading caravan has a cleric with Purify Food & Drink?). There should be a town every 10-20 miles along the caravan route, not the 50 miles or so between them.

The number of taverns and inns also struck me as strange, given the population. As other posters have said, I guess understanding the transitory population is critical there. It's also odd that there's a separate brewery, as I would expect each tavern just to brew their own, but I'm probably getting a bit too historical accurate and less Fantasy Flavour there!

I was going to sit down and try and build an economic model comparing cost of living and price of tavern goods to see how much business each tavern would need to do. But then I realised this is a fantasy roleplaying game and I decided I had better things to do :)

(besides which, the issue with the tavern pales into insignificance when you ask why all the high level NPCs that seem to populate the town need to rely on 1st level newbies to save them from a Goblin raid ;-)


PD wrote:


(besides which, the issue with the tavern pales into insignificance when you ask why all the high level NPCs that seem to populate the town need to rely on 1st level newbies to save them from a Goblin raid ;-)

I did think they were pretty good at capping the PC-class NPCs at 4th level. IMC when I ran the raid (on Wednesday!) Shalelu was present, and I did show Shalelu, Ameiko and Sheriff Belor as active in battling the goblins - Shalelu probably killed more than anyone else. I emphasised there were a lot more goblins than the ones the PCs were fighting. Two of the PCs did 'step on up' and are now seen as local heroes. IMC Bruthazmus took part in the raid, kidnapping a local girl, and the two PCs helped Shalelu and Ameiko track him down and kill him four miles east of Sandpoint before he could get back to Thistletop, thus saving the girl and returning victorious.

I thought the number of taverns & inns was reasonable for a market town/trade centre. The glassworks and shipyard are slightly unlikely, but maybe Magnimar has heavy taxes and the founders wanted to found a settlement where they'd be tax-free and in-charge. Thinking of it in terms of American colonies rather than medieval Europe helps I think.


PD wrote:

I only just bought it, and I thought exactly the same thing as the OP.

Firstly, the location seems a bit odd to me. Medieval towns tended to be quite close together: you need a good flexible supply of labour for things like the tannery and glassworks, so you need to be close enough to the next big town so that workers can freely move from one to the other. You also need to be close enough to effectively trade perishable goods (although I guess may every trading caravan has a cleric with Purify Food & Drink?). There should be a town every 10-20 miles along the caravan route, not the 50 miles or so between them.

I'm used to adding in lots of extra villages whenever I GM any fantasy setting, Golarion is no exception. I'd take it that there are smaller villages and waystations all along the Lost Coast, but sparser than medieval Europe; more like New England in the 17th century perhaps (the Inner Sea setting in general feels more c17/18 than medieval). The Hook Mountain region map has several settlements, and logically that area would be more sparsely settled than the lands around Magnimar.


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PD wrote:
...(besides which, the issue with the tavern pales into insignificance when you ask why all the high level NPCs that seem to populate the town need to rely on 1st level newbies to save them from a Goblin raid ;-)

I have always treated NPC's like those in Sandpoint who have levels in either the NPC or PC classes as non-combatants. Just because you have three levels in cleric doesn't mean you're any good in combat. To badly paraphrase the John Wayne character from "The Shootist" - "It's not question of who's fastest; it's a question of being willing." To fight to the death takes a certain mindset or courage, not everyone has it. Additionally many of the NPC's in Sandpoint who have class levels are "retired." Maybe they fought battles in the past but now the mind, spirit or especially body aren't willing.

I think it's also important for DM's to remind the players that they did not "save Sandpoint." Hemlock and his men and even some of these very NPC's were fighting off a much larger force of goblins on the perimeter. The goblin force in the middle of town was an undefended threat and the players stood up without expectation of reward and certainly saved lives and maybe the Cathedral. But eventually, with an admittedly higher body count, Hemlock, the guards and again some of the NPC's would have dealt with it. Getting this across to players also helps with the discovery that it happened as a result of treason. I could go on about DM's being careful not to paint Hemlock as Sheriff Useless but that would be hijacking the thread even more.


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Ha - I based the sheriff and his men off of the watch from the discworld series.

One of the deputies is actually a Corporal Knobb.

Sandpoint doesn't really have any trouble - up to this point they've only had the chopper murders to deal with - as horrible as those were they aren't the same thing as a goblin invasion.

I did play up when the Sheriff got back the help from Magnimar being large - and very military - basically doing a very thorough job of protecting the town - this was the only thing that let my players relax enough to leave to track down Thistletop.

Dark Archive

You think Sandpoint's bad? Try Barovia. Population 50, and they have a tavern...

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Mudfoot wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Thing is... Sandpoint is based on my real-world home town, Point Arena.
So when do we get stats for the Sandpoint Mountain Beaver?

I'm pretty sure it's lurking at Kaye Tesserani's place.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Mudfoot wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
Thing is... Sandpoint is based on my real-world home town, Point Arena.
So when do we get stats for the Sandpoint Mountain Beaver?

Wow. Well sleuthed!

Here's the wily Point Arena mountain beaver on the city's seal!

Shadow Lodge

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the David wrote:
You think Sandpoint's bad? Try Barovia. Population 50, and they have a tavern...

I've been to smaller towns with a tavern. It's the only place to go in some towns.


Usual Suspect wrote:
the David wrote:
You think Sandpoint's bad? Try Barovia. Population 50, and they have a tavern...
I've been to smaller towns with a tavern. It's the only place to go in some towns.

In my home town we lost the cinema :( and some of the pubs are so rough they have a pig in the corner as air freshener :D


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S'mon wrote:
The monastery has one monk, right? :D The theatre is the only thing that really strikes me as incredibly implausible.

i lived in a small town a little smaller then Sandpoint (had 1,100) it had 2 theaters, and bars as far as the eye can see!

theres a lot more going on in small towns then people realize:)


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S'mon wrote:
PD wrote:

I only just bought it, and I thought exactly the same thing as the OP.

Firstly, the location seems a bit odd to me. Medieval towns tended to be quite close together: you need a good flexible supply of labour for things like the tannery and glassworks, so you need to be close enough to the next big town so that workers can freely move from one to the other. You also need to be close enough to effectively trade perishable goods (although I guess may every trading caravan has a cleric with Purify Food & Drink?). There should be a town every 10-20 miles along the caravan route, not the 50 miles or so between them.

I'm used to adding in lots of extra villages whenever I GM any fantasy setting, Golarion is no exception. I'd take it that there are smaller villages and waystations all along the Lost Coast, but sparser than medieval Europe; more like New England in the 17th century perhaps (the Inner Sea setting in general feels more c17/18 than medieval). The Hook Mountain region map has several settlements, and logically that area would be more sparsely settled than the lands around Magnimar.

Same here. I ended up mapping south west Varisia in more detail adding in villages and other points of interest. Since my players are about to finish with Misgivings I had better complete the location guide! There goes the weekend.

Here's the map:
Detailed map of south west Varisia

The names are intended to feel Varisian, named after the camp-stops along the various trails, rather than the larger towns which have chelish names - although these have Varisian names too of course.


Yossarian wrote:
Same here. I ended up mapping south west Varisia in more detail adding in villages and other points of interest.

Another job well done Yossarian! Awesome! I don't suppose there is a compendium to go along with the small towns? :)


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The Rising Phoenix wrote:
Yossarian wrote:
Same here. I ended up mapping south west Varisia in more detail adding in villages and other points of interest.
Another job well done Yossarian! Awesome! I don't suppose there is a compendium to go along with the small towns? :)

There is indeed, I'm a few weeks from completing it. I know the date because that's when my players are due to leave Sandpoint! Nothing like a deadline…

Here's an example, hopefully i'll get all of it to this level but likely the Lost Coast road villages will be fully detailed with the Yondabakari settlements done after. Sur and Orsova are almost finished too.

Link: Guide to the Alba Lilia monastery in South West Varisia

Link: Work in progress village maps


Usual Suspect wrote:
I've been to smaller towns with a tavern. It's the only place to go in some towns.

Indeed, some towns grew up around the tavern or inn or general store that was at a convenient stopping point along the road... the town came later.


I've lived in small towns and overall, Paizo has weird ideas of what's found in small towns. I dwelt in a place that had a population of 30, 300, 700, 1000, 3000, 1000, 7000, and 8000.

Most places under 1000 don't even have basic stores to utilize...though previously if they were the central hub of the area within 30-50 miles they probably had a General store (some still do, but they are vacant or transformed into a gas station or otherwise).

I have several homes right now, currently I am an area which probably has a population of 500, though the closest city is around 10,000 which is about 10 minutes away and another around 30,000 so major services are done by those. The only places nearest us is a Gas Station which is more or less for the Highway and not us, and a bar/restaurant.

We do have electricians, plumbers, ranchers, and those who could do basic services if needed, but none really have shop here. Most of those in the area are farmers though.

Technically we fall within the areas for another county/township, but are just there for mail services really. Otherwise, we rely on the locals for things like snow plows, cleanup, etc.

I figure if you only count city locals though, instead of the total city population count, you could get down to numbers like they show (afterall, I think Atlanta is only around 400K but if you include the REAL Atlanta it has a population of 2 to 3 million, other cities are like this as well).

Due to those experiences, I simply figure Paizo thinks everyplace is like a big city regardless of the population...either that or simply states those who live in city center and don't count the rest of the population.

So, I basically multiply Paizo's numbers by 10 (though x5 probably would do it, except for places like Ravenmoor where theoretically with their sacrifices every moon, they should have killed themselves off within 10 years).

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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EDIT: Changed my post. Wasn't worth it.

Make of Sandpoint what you will to work best in your game.


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I have played Sandpoint as a thriving trade centre.

Varisian caravans travel through every few days bringing goods and stories from all over. The Sczarni smuggle extensively. The town is a frequent stop for ships of all sizes that ply the Varisian Bay trading with the various small settlements along the coast. The farmlands south of the town are well populated: much of the harvest is shipped to Magnimar to feed the many hungry mouths there.

On top of this many adventurers and explorers pass through, seeking their fortunes along the lost coast and further inland. Sandpoint is the last major settlement before the hundred mile overland trek to Nybor, a place to recover, train and recruit companions.

The many local businesses have sprung up to take advantage of all this trade. Specialist producers (e.g. the Glassworks) and traders (e.g. Pillbug, Curious Goblin etc), compliment the taverns and inns that serve all the travellers and visitors.

I also have GM'd the general Sandpoint population as a gregarious bunch. Much like an English town the pubs provide the shared living spaces for the population - hence there are so many pubs in small English towns. The lack of 'modern home entertainment' as we see it - TV, internet etc - means that people come together out of their homes to fill their time when not working.

My players and I have found Sandpoint immersive and 'realistic' in terms of its size and what it provides.

Applying modern social geography comparisons makes very little sense to me. Technologies like cars, television, phones, preserved food, as well as modern big-box retail make the equivalence almost meaningless. Although never underestimate how much some cultures can drink!… Rhayader - a town of 2,000 residents with 12 pubs!


GreyWolfLord wrote:


So, I basically multiply Paizo's numbers by 10 (though x5 probably would do it, except for places like Ravenmoor where theoretically with their sacrifices every moon, they should have killed themselves off within 10 years).

I do something similar - I reckoned Korvosa's population at 50,000, still pretty light given the area within the walls, and ten times that including the rural hinterland, giving a population density of around 10 per square mile - plausible for a sparsely settled frontier. Sandpoint's population can't really go much over the listed figure of 1200, so best to emphasise its role as a trade and transit hub, including for farms and hamlets off-map to the south and south-west; a total area population of 6,000-12,000 seems reasonable, up to around 100 per square mile in the best farmland.


Given that London, England's population prior to the plague was in the millions, I've long felt that Paizo understates urban populations. Don't forget, these aren't 20th-century middle-class people. It's only the rich who can afford to have a bedroom for each child (or even really a separate bedroom for kids and parents). And families tended to be big because half of those kids would die in childhood from the various diseases that come around.

Even with magic and clerical healing, plague would still wipe out a number of children; how common is the average 5th level non-adventuring cleric? Not very. So communities will likely have a high infant mortality rate... and when adults get hurt, not too many people will be able to afford healing unless they can somehow trade for it. And even then, some people just won't survive long enough for a cleric to be able to help them even with magic.

Some regions might differ; a priesthood that is trying to expand into a new area may very well pay to have a Wand of Cure Disease (and maybe a Wand of Cure Light Wounds) created for use when those childhood diseases hit... but only offer healing and disease curing for those families that are of the faith. (Cynical? Yes. But let's be honest here; why should a divinity use its energy on someone who is not of the faith unless there is some benefit that comes from it?)

Once a religion is established and has a tithe supporting it, it might very well start using some of that tithe for extra wands of cure disease and the like as plagues can strike at inopportune times. These communities would likely become theocratic in nature because it's the power of this divinity that allows the community to flourish. And at the same time I could see these churches stomping out any medicines and the like as "ungodly" because they are a threat to the power of the church.


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Tangent101 wrote:
Given that London, England's population prior to the plague was in the millions, I've long felt that Paizo understates urban populations.

The city population numbers look to be copied over from 3e, but unlike 3e I haven't seen any statement that they are adult population only. 3e D&D seems to have copied them loosely from Gygax's 1e AD&D DMG and World of Greyhawk. They are not that far off high medieval Europe outside the metropoles like Paris & London (although national & rural populations tend to be far sparser), but they don't fit particularly well with the 17th/18th century vibe of most Golarion material. Korvosa and Magnimar feel like they should be big cities with tens of thousands of people, not "Is this a town or a city?" - which is the vibe I get from populations of 16,000-18,000.


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Keep in mind, Sandpoint is only 50 years old and Magnimar, what? about 150 or 200? Unlikely for them to get much larger than officially sized in the available time frame. Really rapid growth is going to require immigration in significant volume - where would those people come from? And if it did happen it would be a major cultural and historical trend.

I would agree though that Golarion has an eclectic mix of medieval and renaissance elements.


During the colonial America era, Americans each averaged more than 7 children per generation; the population growth was driven by natural increase far more than by immigration. The French Quebecois are descended from a few thousand original settlers. Historically this is true wherever humans expand into new territory, 200 years is plenty of time to develop large populations and big cities, although I guess the existence of effective contraception on Golarion could dent population growth and help explain why most of the planet remains monster-infested wilderness - the other explanation, that the monsters eat the humans, works for eg the orcs of Belkzen, but I'm not sure Sandpoint's goblins are enough of a threat.


S'mon wrote:
During the colonial America era, Americans each averaged more than 7 children per generation; the population growth was driven by natural increase far more than by immigration. The French Quebecois are descended from a few thousand original settlers. Historically this is true wherever humans expand into new territory, 200 years is plenty of time to develop large populations and big cities, although I guess the existence of effective contraception on Golarion could dent population growth and help explain why most of the planet remains monster-infested wilderness - the other explanation, that the monsters eat the humans, works for eg the orcs of Belkzen, but I'm not sure Sandpoint's goblins are enough of a threat.

Perhaps a bit off topic but colonial america is a particularly extreme case - the population explosion is historically unprecedented. Example: the seven children aren't unusual in terms of births but colonial Americans consistently raised 7 or 8 children to adulthood. That is almost unprecedented without modern medicine. In 1700 the population is estimated to have been around 250,000 and by the first census in 1790, it reached 3.9 million - a huge population surge. Yet, the largest city was New York at 33k followed by Philadelphia at 28k and Boston at 18k (amusingly enough - listed as a "town" at the time.) So the sizes of the Varisian cities do not seem all that implausible to me, especially as none of the recent history of Varisia describes any population growth or events similar to colonial America (at least as I have seen or interpreted them.)


I definitely agree that the listed city sizes are not implausible - and city growth does tend to be driven by immigration, whereas rural population growth tends to be endogamous. I just think that the tone/feel of Magnimar and Korvosa suits larger population numbers than are given, and certainly the listed scale of Korvosa and description of the Shingles etc (though the American-style suburban layout depicted on the Korvosa map would fit the low listed population figure).

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