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Loki_42
2010-08-16, 06:24 PM
My PC's will acquire a plot of land at the end of their next adventure, and they are trying to start a town on it. They've been going around and convincing people to start shops in their town already.
Currently they have-
An eatery/Inn
A stable/Horse Dealer
A general Store
A temple to Pelor
Possibly a Monastary
And a Chapterhouse for a Secret Society of Undead Hunters

What I'm asking is are there any rules for things in a town that the PC's can't control. Things like how many NPC's will move to There mainly. Are there any rules for this, or any suggestions for rules?

KillianHawkeye
2010-08-16, 06:34 PM
You're asking for rules, but I don't see any mention of what particular game you might be playing. Help us help you.

Loki_42
2010-08-16, 06:37 PM
I'm playing D&D 3.5, but most of what I'm looking for could probably be for any system.

KillianHawkeye
2010-08-16, 06:43 PM
Okay. Well, the DMG has rules for determining how many characters of a certain class will live in a city of a certain size, but really nothing on founding a new city or getting people to move there. That kind of thing usually takes a long time and is dependant on many different factors.

Aroka
2010-08-16, 07:22 PM
You can't just get a bunch of people together and build a town overnight. There has to be a resource being produced in the area, and it'll probably take years to build up population to even require a town, and then years to build up the infrastructure as the population slowly increases.

The classic US western boom-tons that did spring up "overnight" (hardly) were mostly built around gold rushes. When you've got gold, you'll get gold-diggers, and the more they are, the more they require: general stores, hardware stores, grocers, stables and horses, saloons, brothels, motels, a church, and so on.

In D&D, the obvious analogy is a big dungeon or other area full of treasure and monsters. Building a "frontier outpost" should be perfectly possible - start with a big sturdy house you can defend easily, surround it with a perimeter defense (start with a trench and sharpened stakes, then build wooden walls, then upgrade those to stone - preferrably at a greater distance - then keep building new enclosed areas around one of the gates). Such a place should start out with a temple that offers healing, a magic item store, a place to fence loot (a mid-level wizard could make a fortune buying loot from adventurers on the cheap, then teleporting around the world to sell it ahead at top prices), an inn, general supply stores, stables and liveries, and a weapon- and armorsmith (a rarity in small settlements).

More mundanely, find a local resource and work it. If there's a lot of forest, maybe with popular or useful tree types, start logging. If there's a lot of open, fertile ground, start farming (or if there's trees, burn them down, then start farming). You'll want to build along a stream or by a lake; if it's a big or busy river, that could provide the economical impetus all by itself. A river or coastline used by trading barges could be a good spot for a stop-over and trading post (it's going to be closer to one end of the route, which will entice merchants from the destination to show up to buy from ships stopping there before their competitors can compete for it at the main location, driving prices up; and the barges will be happy if they can unload all their merchandise at the stop-over, because it will allow them to return and get another shipment). Also, if it's on a busy trade river and the PCs are powerful and unscrupulous, they can do the good old German raubritter thing - build a tower to overlook the river, and put a huge chain across the river that you can raise to block passage to the barges, then demand a toll. (Don't be unreasonable and don't rob them - that'll just get you trouble.)

Most people are blithely ignorant of the realities of medieval land ownership, but it can be a ton of fun to integrate into a game. Basically, all land in a civilised region is somebody's possession; it may be the kings, or held allodially (by their own right, rather than given by the king) by a Duke/equivalent or lesser noble. Land is divided into fiefs - a noble makes a vassal by granting them land to life off. People are traditionally bound to this land as serfs or villeins, not quite free to just up and leave it (there were taxes or payments involved). In a more Dark Ages (or Medieval Swedish, I suppose) style setting, vassals would probably keep everything they make off their land, and only owe military service to their liege. In a later style setting, there will be various taxes - to the church, to the king, to the liege - some of which might partly or wholly replace the military service. A liege, in return for a vassal's loyalty, service, and taxes, is responsible for protecting the vassal's lands from robbers, neighbors, rivals, and enemies.

Towns were usually part of a fief, but things got pretty complicated with big towns and cities later on, with special freedoms, charters, practically not being part of anyone's fief, etc. Cities owed taxes to the crown and so on, but had a great deal of freedom, and collected wealth, creating the middle classes, who eventually ended up wealthier than the nobles, and often put the nobility into debt to them. (From there, it's just one more step - giving or selling lands to one's creditors - to non-noble landowners.)

How the PCs acquire the land is incredibly important. A common situation is that a noble or king or other ruler grants PCs lands on a frontier (a march); this was actually commonly done, historically, and marquess/marquis/margrave (march-count, i.e. border-count) would probably be a capable warleader, often rewarded with land taken in war, and well able to defend it. This works out very well in D&D, but it's important to remember that in a (probably more or less feudal) monarchy, the title is crucial. The vassal-liege relationship this creates (and the potential for the PCs to create vassals themselves) is also a cool dynamic to play around with; for instance, the PCs will owe loyalty and military service to their liege, which can be used to pull them into all sorts of adventures.

I can't over-recommend A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe for your purposes, and Fief is pretty awesome too (but has much more to do with the nitty-gritty of feudal life than AMMS:WE, which has more to do with mechanics, design, and rules, specifically for D&D 3.X/d20).


Edit: Can you tell I freaking love this topic? Making your FRPG setting legitimately feudal is so much fun.

hamishspence
2010-08-17, 07:54 AM
Power of Faerun does have a chapter on "the frontier leader" and the issues behind putting together a settlement in the wilderness.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 08:33 AM
Power of Faerun does have a chapter on "the frontier leader" and the issues behind putting together a settlement in the wilderness.

Power of Faerūn is a pretty awesome book overall - very little rules, lots of actual ideas. It did seem to be typically D&D-ignorant of feudalism, though. Weirdly enough, even D&D monarchies tend to not seem all that feudal. There's some nobles with vague political powers, but knights seem to just be adventurers or professional soldiers who sometimes get to swan around looking fancy, rather than landowning manor-lords with feudal obligations; considering the knight's manor is the foundation of feudalism, this is weird. In Faerūn and Eberron, for instance, the societies seem more 17th-century, with powerful commoner landowners, merchant houses, etc., and very little attention given to nobles. Even in Waterdeep, the noble houses are important mostly as trade cartels (the notion of a bunch of noble houses all centered around one city is pretty weird anyway, especially when they don't seem to own any significant portions of the city, and in general don't seem to have sources of income other than trade).

I get a much bigger kick out of western medieval fantasy societies that are actually feudal, like the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.


Also, for rules: AFAIK there's no 3.X rules anywhere for the running of settlements, but old D&D Companion rules did have mechanics for running fiefs, which could include settlements. There's terrible rules in DMG2 for running businesses (the short of it is that, without exaggeration, only high-risk businesses run by a seriously optimized character can recoup their original investment in a matter of mere years; it's decades or a century for medium- and low-risk businesses) - but you could use the random events given as a basis for random town events.

It shouldn't be that hard to come up with your own rules, though. The main things would be population growth and wealth. Population growth would be essentially a random roll - this could be something like 1D10-5 % (so -4% to +5%) to population per time unit (year or month). Wealth would be divided into community wealth and PC profit; PC profit per time unit would depend on community wealth and PC greed, but the higher the PCs jack their share of the wealth, the more it affects community wealth. Sources of income would mainly be taxation (for PCs), trade (for community), and resources like mines (for both). You'd have to decide on numbers that work for you; the D&D economy is so ridiculously twisted it's pointless to try to derive "logical" numbers, and you want to limit the PCs' profits so they can't just buy a million billion magical items. (Of course, if magical items aren't easily available and money has to mostly be spent on mundane things, like wages, equipment, property, etc., there's no worry.)

PCs would be able to invest their money, probably supplemented by community wealth (and possibly by outside investors who would then derive a portion of any profits and increase their influence in the community as the proportion of their investments grows), into various "upgrades" - infrastructure, businesses, etc. Roads, bridges, mines, walls, defenses, gates, toll booths, warfs, piers, warehouses, shops and workshops, temples, manors, palaces, etc. Many of these would have an effect on community wealth growth, some might affect population growth, etc.

The PCs would also have control over distribution of surplus, over taxing producers like farmers (low taxation means less PC wealth but higher community wealth growth, probably higher population growth). Community wealth, but more importantly recent community wealth change, would affect population growth; a small settlement would probably grow fast, especially if it's growing in wealth, but any settlement that's actively growing poorer would be losing population (although it could draw in investors who see an opportunity for cheap acquisitions, and thus new wealth, and thus new population).

Come up with a bunch of things the PCs could build, ask the players for more ideas, and assign costs and effects. Decide on numbers, die rolls, and time units. Wing the rest.

hamishspence
2010-08-17, 08:39 AM
Power of Faerūn is a pretty awesome book overall - very little rules, lots of actual ideas. It did seem to be typically D&D-ignorant of feudalism, though. Weirdly enough, even D&D monarchies tend to not seem all that feudal. There's some nobles with vague political powers, but knights seem to just be adventurers or professional soldiers who sometimes get to swan around looking fancy, rather than landowning manor-lords with feudal obligations; considering the knight's manor is the foundation of feudalism, this is weird. In Faerūn and Eberron, for instance, the societies seem more 17th-century, with powerful commoner landowners, merchant houses, etc., and very little attention given to nobles. Even in Waterdeep, the noble houses are important mostly as trade cartels (the notion of a bunch of noble houses all centered around one city is pretty weird anyway, especially when they don't seem to own any significant portions of the city, and in general don't seem to have sources of income other than trade).

DMG2 does go into a bit more depth on the pseudo-feudal societies of D&D- and the FRCS does mention the low and high nobility, as well as their typical roles and duties.

I like PoF- even if some of the rules bits aren't great (merchant prince?) the fluff is fun to read.

Loki_42
2010-08-17, 04:51 PM
Thanks, I just got power of Faerun and am trying to find the other two books. This should probably help some.

Crafty Cultist
2010-08-17, 05:03 PM
I'd say how fast people come to form a town would depend upon the opportunities the place provides. If the characters can provide saftey and steady work then people will start to trickle in, but if there are untapped resources, then opportunists will rush in, though when the resourses dry up most of them will leave

TheThan
2010-08-17, 05:53 PM
Aroka has the right idea, make it make sense, and take time to build up. Ultimately there has to be something there that people want, that could be trees from a forest, fertile land to grow food on or raise livestock, gold/silver/ other precious or useful metals, gems etc.


Also consider running an adventure where they have to take a “wagon train” to the desired destination


Really you don’t need any special rules for raising a town, just start small with a group of say ten settlers, and give PCs quests that will help their settlement grow.

Sinfonian
2010-08-17, 06:28 PM
I think it might not be a bad idea to follow Yahtzee's advice for building a town (see his review for Torchlight). Try to trade whatever good land you have for something adjacent to/on top of something which will draw scads of adventurers. Watch the businesses and visitors come rolling in.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 08:43 PM
I think it might not be a bad idea to follow Yahtzee's advice for building a town (see his review for Torchlight). Try to trade whatever good land you have for something adjacent to/on top of something which will draw scads of adventurers. Watch the businesses and visitors come rolling in.

Works on a smaller scale, too - the Yawning Portal in Waterdeep does a nice business, and if the owner doesn't charge clerics a surcharge to work there, he's losing out on even more.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-17, 08:57 PM
Just roleplay out the encounters...let them demonstrate to business owners why they should move there. The default answer should be "hell no", unless they have rather convincing evidence of some way in which the owners life would be improved. More money, safety and security, etc. Keep in mind that most established businesses already have some money and a decent degree of safety, or they wouldn't BE established businesses.

Going after apprentices, etc who are eager to start businesses will actually be easier, though you get a tradeoff in experience and resources. They may need loans and the like.

Easiest is simply hiring people and having them run your stuff. More effort for the player, but this actually has rules...a few under henchmen in the DMG, with more elaborate and detailed info in SBG.

Jack_Simth
2010-08-17, 09:05 PM
(a mid-level wizard could make a fortune buying loot from adventurers on the cheap, then teleporting around the world to sell it ahead at top prices)
Yes and no. The problem, being, that the mid-level wizard needs to find customers that'll pay full price for the goods.

Now, if I need to explain magic shops, that's essentially what's happening - you've got a bunch of experts running magic shops. They have ring gates that go to a central location, and cursed bags of holding (they lightly toss out anything placed in them several rounds after they're closed).

You give the loot to sell to the expert, he puts them in the hole, and passes it through the ring gate. On the other side (the central office, with all manner of wards), a Wizard uses Analyze Dweomer to figure out what they are, puts payment in the bag, and hands it back. The expert then grabs the cash from the bag, and gives it to the adventurers. Buying stuff is the same, only in reverse; you give the gold to the expert, the expert puts it in the bag along with a note, then passes the bag through the gate, where the Wizard reads the note, checks the gold, puts the goods in the bag, and passes it back... and the expert opens it, and hands you your stuff.

If you attack the merchant, you get... very little. Half of a pair of ring-gates, and a bag of holding that you can't store anything in for very long (and an angry wizard that's a very long distance away - he has to replace that ring gate and cursed bag).

The merchants are just paid experts (who know that if they cheat, they're either facing down the swords of some adventurers, a wizardly employer, or both - kinda self-regulating, there...). They sit around, earning a decent wage, advertising their services and waiting for people who are willing to pay full market price.

The Wizard running this makes a killing... if there's enough 'traffic' through any given store front to cover the expenses involved.

Oh yes, and if you attempt to follow through a ring gate?

Well, you're walking into the lair of a Wizard who's had lots and lots of time and resources to spend trapping the place up with Symbol spells and other selective magical traps. AKA, 'make 20 saves, vs. death, 20 saves vs. charming, 20 saves vs. insanity. Oh yes, and you just walked through a Greater Dispelling Screen at caster level 20 Permanencied and put up by a guy with Arcane Mastery; all your items are suppressed, all your buffs are stripped off. Have fun.').

Tyndmyr
2010-08-17, 09:07 PM
Yknow you can cast THROUGH the ring gates, right?

Fax Celestis
2010-08-17, 09:07 PM
here's terrible rules in DMG2 for running businesses (the short of it is that, without exaggeration, only high-risk businesses run by a seriously optimized character can recoup their original investment in a matter of mere years; it's decades or a century for medium- and low-risk businesses) - but you could use the random events given as a basis for random town events.

I wouldn't call them "terrible", I'd call them "untested". If you fiddle with the numbers, it can work out okay.

Jack_Simth
2010-08-17, 09:11 PM
Yknow you can cast THROUGH the ring gates, right?
What, you think they're set up so you have Line of Effect to the Wizard? Maybe if you can make your spells do right angles ... and if you start casting at him, all he has to do is dispel the ring gate to cut you off for a time.

Also: What happens to a spell that's cast through a dispelling screen?


Easiest is simply hiring people and having them run your stuff. More effort for the player, but this actually has rules...a few under henchmen in the DMG, with more elaborate and detailed info in SBG.
Very much so. Hire expert-1's to Craft stuff for you off the natural resources in the area. Let a few merchants know where you'll be, and that you're paying your people. A town will spring up around you, in the manner of a military town or a college town. You will, of course, also need the merchants anyway, as you've got stuff to sell them (crafted by your hirelings).

Aroka
2010-08-17, 09:33 PM
I wouldn't call them "terrible", I'd call them "untested". If you fiddle with the numbers, it can work out okay.

Okay, granted, but they're so ridiculously untested. No one ever even bothered doing simple division (investment / profit) to see that it takes more than a lifetime to recoup an original investment.

And if you factor in that the investment will probably be a loan for most business owners, even with crazy low interest rates it will take human generations to pay back the loan. With barely higher, still low, interest rates, you can't even make interest payments (or buy food), never mind paying off the loan.


Just roleplay out the encounters...let them demonstrate to business owners why they should move there. The default answer should be "hell no", unless they have rather convincing evidence of some way in which the owners life would be improved. More money, safety and security, etc. Keep in mind that most established businesses already have some money and a decent degree of safety, or they wouldn't BE established businesses.

Going after apprentices, etc who are eager to start businesses will actually be easier, though you get a tradeoff in experience and resources. They may need loans and the like.

Easiest is simply hiring people and having them run your stuff. More effort for the player, but this actually has rules...a few under henchmen in the DMG, with more elaborate and detailed info in SBG.

Definitely. It probably wouldn't ever be business owners (unless they're going under) - it'd be people who could own a business, like journeymen and plain regular folks. It doesn't take a lot of expertise beyond what a farmer already has to run a basic store - just someone who can do basic math and keep a ledger for you. What people need is a convincing argument that life in the new place will be so much better that it pays to go to the bother to move there.

This can be really easy when you're "selling" farmland, for instance; take a bunch of farmhands and tell them they can have this land to farm if they pay you a tax and one person per household shows up for militia practice now and again.

If you've got precious ores, you won't have to give much of a pitch - just demonstrate to someone that there's money to be made mining, and you've set off a snowball that'll become an avalanche.

Hiring people to work everything isn't really sustainable. Hiring people to work a specific resource - a mine, a logging camp, whatever - is, obviously, since you profit off the work. And once you've got that set up and enough people around, you'll get others moving into the area, seeking opportunity.

Thurbane
2010-08-17, 09:34 PM
Your best official resources for town building in D&D 3.X are DMG, Cityscape, DMG II and Stronghold Builders Guidebook.

...starting a town is a really cool goal and adventure arc for a party - I like this idea a lot. :smallsmile:

FelixG
2010-08-17, 09:45 PM
Theres a third party book:

http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7310

It gives rules for running whole civilizations and large scale battles with units.

The civilization part may be more to your liking though as i could see it easily scaled down to city life.

For example you choose how you run it (warlord, enlightened, tyranical ect) and that adjusts your peoples moral and taxes, each "turn" is a week long but you collect taxes at the beginning of each season, things are built over weeks so the players could easily pop in, collect taxes for the season (or re invest them to make the town bigger and better which there are numerous rules listed for) then pop back off to adventuring.

There are a few random event tables as well which would be invaluable to see what sort of eventts happen in your settlement, from ice storms in the winter to crop fires in the summer or local heros rising ect.