My people....

My main characters will start out as just normal kids (all human btw... elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. are in the world, but they the aren't in this particular area). They are crafts people, and are going on their journeymanship tour to aquire new skills, make contacts, and see the world. The world is primitive, but the people are happy. The kid's go with their basic supplies and their hopes and dreams to the north and west of their sleepy town to their first destination. Along the way, they learn more about each other and they learn that the cleric has been called, and the sorceress slips that she can do "things" using her mind.

One thing that I think is going to be different, is that the kids are going to know each other, and they, in the normal town setting would have been a couple of friends and then the friends of a friend type relationship. They aren't that close. But before things are over they will be like brothers and sisters (or closer).

I did a guesstimated census for my street, and the small town, quiet and hardworking people here are very similar to what I would like for my "hometown" of Rosenford. A quick estimation, I count 24 houses on my street. Out of these 24 homes, there are about 16 elderly people that live on this street, about 30-34 adults, and about 12 kids under the age of 18. I think there are 2-3 kids that would be in the age ranges that I have in mind for the characters in my story. I know in the world that I have, more people would tend to live in a home than just a single elderly couple, and a single mom would probably be quite a bit more rare. Here there are 24 houses, almost a third of those houses have elderly people in them, and only about 2 or 3 of those eight have more than just the elderly person or couple in them. The other 16 homes house on average 2 adults and either have 2 or more kids or none. I'd say only here the average of households with kids would be around 25% (4). In my world, it would be much more manual labor to be done, so that would tend to have more kids and more people in each household. In my world, I would think that in an area of 24 households, there would be on average 1-4 elderly persons, 2-6 adults, and 2 - 8 kids. That would be an average population of 8 people per household. Some would have no elderly, with parents and only a couple kids maybe, but then there could be a farm with 3-4 generations there with 20 people in a 3-4 bedroom house. Also where my street is about a half a mile, the same number of households in my world would be considered to be fairly densely packed if they were in an area within a couple miles. I read in a medival history book about village life that it was thought that it took 10 acres for a family to raise their food, livestock and food for the livestock. That would be 240 acres for just 24 households, where here, the 24 households are probably on less than 30 acres. But then again, there isn't any livestock here besides maybe a chicken or two, and most gardens are for decoration, not food. There are a couple small vegetable gardens, but they are mostly for suppliemental food. I completely understand 10 acres per family being needed to supply a family with food. So my population would jump from modern day 50 to 100, but on almost 10 times the land.