Jane Williams
> > >What is the point of being 300km from the nearest
settlement, unless you REALLY hate company?
Luke Silburn
> > Nitpick. It was a round-trip total, so he 'only'
lives 150km from a decent cinema. I presume there are
places closer to hand that *don't* have decent
cinemas.
> OK, fair nitpick, but that's still a very long way
from a major settlement. And I still have no idea why.
Jane Williams
Don't know the Australian case personally, but if you're living on a ranch, it just may be that far. It's where you own land, or have a job. Not unreasonable in the North American prairies, anyway. A lot of land to farm, and not many people needed to do it, these days. Plus if it was a repertory cinema, those can be few and far between even in allegedly well-populated places!
To give you a Canadian example, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 1994 there were 2,100,000 people living on 1,300,000 km2. Of those, 1,400,000 lived in urban areas (1000+/town, or >400 people/km2), of which only there were only 21 towns of 5,000-50,000 people. Several of those were really just suburbs of metro Winnipeg, with 700,000 total. Regina and Saskatoon account for another 370,000. The rural density of 700,000/1,300,000 km2 is way less than 1 person/km2. How far might you have to drive to get to a decent cinema there? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that it's often much farther than 150 km!
Dragging this back to Glorantha, it is probably even farther distances (in time) to various amenities in much of the world. Back when boats, horses and wagons were the normal ways to travel, even I find it hard to imagine just how long it took to get to towns out west. But apparently the drive to own your own land is so great that it was worth it to many thousand settlers. Dragon Pass resettlement was probably much the same.
Alison
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