John, I'm going to echo some of the other sentiments above. Given that you have slow transport (I will find it hard to believe that a dragon will go faster than a 747) you really *don't* need a world vastly bigger than earth. And to your characters, so long as there are places which are further away than a day or two's travel (by whatever local means), the world will be a vast place.
There's an appropriate conversation from Pride and Prejudice to illustrate this:
Quote:
"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends."
"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."
"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance."
|
IMO, if the reason for making the planet bigger is just so that it is sufficiently vast, it's completely unnecessary. Generally in fantasy readers will accept that they are only looking at a tiny part of the known world. If anything, flying, fire-breathing dragons are much harder to believe although they have a sufficiently long fantasy history that most readers can ignore their complete implausibility if you don't draw attention to it. I think that's what turned me off Pern in the end.