PDA

View Full Version : Building a City as a campaign



Nad
2007-01-11, 02:27 PM
Quick background:

My friends and I have previously run campaigns where our characters founded a frontier city and we're the mayors. We used a random chart from Dragon to increase it's size and the town quickly became the hot spot for all our other PCs to visit and build a residence. It was lot of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a new campaign.

Recently we've decided to give it another shot as the other campaign has been laid to rest with second edition. This time around we're tweaking the system and I would like to share this process on the boards for feedback and brainstorming. When the finished product is available, hopefully it is a simple yet useful growth system for a PC run city.

The campaign is being run in Greyhawk, so we're looking at a pretty normal fantasy medieval city approach. I'm going to be tracking the data and changes in Excel and Word so minor calculations won't be a hassle. We'll be going on a month to month basis game time.

Monthly Changes:

Population: 0-4%

The population growth needs to be almost non existent at the beginning of the city. 0-4% growth based on a random roll and modifiers, such as the month, anything happening in the previous month and other factors can affect all of this. As the city gets larger, modifiers will be applied, such as a 1% permanent increase in growth, I'll worry about that later.

When there is growth, a new immigrant will have a roll on a random chart to be established later to determine their social status, occupation and their family situation.

There will be four types of people for growth purposes: children, adults, aged adults and elderly. To simplify aging, it will be done once per year. Luckily, Greyhawk has a holiday known as the Ceremony of Turning, perfect fit! So in that month we will apply the aging.

Aging: Ceremony of Turning, 2% of children grow become adults. When a child becomes an adult they roll off the same family chart as a new immigrant. Random 1% of adults become aged adults. Random 2% of aged adults become elderly. All adults and aged adults will be tracked by 20 year incriments. If randomly they have not aged by 20 years, they automatically advance. Random 2% of elderly die.

Every city is going to have random occurances.

The DM is going to drive the plot but shouldn't be expected to bare the entire weight of this system. To suppliment the DM, a random even chart will help. I don't want to add things that the DM should, such as "Bandits Attack" or "Snakes from another Plane attack." Those should be DM driven.

I'm thinking normal city problems that would affect the mudance citizens. To keep it simple, I'm going to break it down into different categories. In the end if I merge them all into one chart for simplicity, we'll see. Please help me with anything I've forgotten, this is kind of overwhelming to think of but I'm trying to stay out of too much detail, the DM can say how someone died or what kind of disease is sweeping the city.

Events: % chance of something happening, roll on the chart

People
Accidental Death
Severe Crime
Gains a rank in society (Peasant > Shop Owner > Merchant > NPC)
Loses a rank in society (NPC > Merchant > Shop Owner > Peasant)
Leaves City

Buildings
Destroyed, occupants survive
Destroyed, occupants perish
Robbed/Vandalized

City
Disease

Weather
Wind Storm
Flash Floods
Lightning Storm
Tornado
Earthquake
Blizzard
Meteor

Trade
New trade route started
Existing trade route stopped

Crops
Insects Plague
Disease
Drought

Random
Treasure Found

Last is the economics of the city. The PCs are going to initially fund it but what kind of costs are they going to have?

Income: Tax revenue, marketplace income
Spending:Hirelings, projects

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this and triple thank yous to anyone offering critique, feedback, suggestions or sharing their own system.
Cheers,
Nad

Telonius
2007-01-11, 02:48 PM
Hm, only 2% of children become adults every year? "Adult" being 16 or older, I'd think it would be closer to 1/16, or 6.25%. As you have it, only 1 out of every 3 kids makes it to adulthood. (Might be doing that wrong, it's been awhile since math class).

If you're already tracking adult aging, it might make more sense to track each year as its own age cohort, from birth on. Roll a percentage based on number of women (adding or subtracting whatever modifiers you think might be appropriate) and determine how many children are born that year. Roll a percentage of that to see how many die before adulthood; and then wait 15 cycles until that bunch matures.

Yakk
2007-01-11, 03:36 PM
Cities should be statted out somehow.

I'd advise using the "family" as the basic unit. A "family" can be single, breeding, or old (no magical contraception!).

A death causes a family to move from Breeding to Single.
Time or misfortune causes a family to move from Breeding to Old, or from Single to Old.

A breeding family takes ~15 to 20 years to produce ~2 to 3 other families. Say 18 years to produce 3 breeding families or 6 single families, or 6 years per spawn. So a Breeding family has about a 1.5% to 3% chance of producing a spawn family every month. Call it 2% per month.

A newly Bred family, with a breeding culture, might have a 75% chance of being Breeding and a 25% chance of being Single (1/2 male, 1/2 female). These values would change based on cultural values.

Migrants (both leaving and arriving) are more likely to be Single than locals. They may have a sexual bias depending on your world.

...

You will want to stat out your city in a way that reflects what characters want from a city. It should have skill levels in various professions and crafts, combat stats based off of it's military might and defences, and stockpiles of resources based off it's wealth and needs.

...

What do you need to know about the city?

For all people:
Culture break down.
Age break down.
Health break down.
Social status break down.

For Adults:
Profession break down.
Quality break down within profession.

Infrastructure:
Housing & Housing quality
Workshops & Shops
Tools & Tool Quality
Storage, Goods stored

Migration:
Number, Professions, Quality, Culture, Age

...

It might be best to have the basic unit be "the family" rather than "the person". That is a simpler economic actor.

Families can be in various stats:
1> Single
2> Breeding
3> Aged

...

You could also approach it from a far more abstract side.

Cities have a few levels.
1> Population level.
2> Wealth level.
3> Culture level.
4> Infrastructure level.

Every 1 point of population is 1 population point. These people need to be fed.

Wealth is a measure of the size of the cities economy.

Culture level is a measure of the cities cultural institutions.

Infrastructure level is a measure of the things that let a city work -- sewage, water, walls, etc.

A steep "XP" chart should be created.

---

Each facet of the city grants "skill points" to the city as a whole. The sum of the facets determines the power and might of the city.

Some stats for a city:
Experts:
- Craft Experts
- Lore Experts
- Professional Experts
- Divine Experts
- Arcane Experts
Stock:
- Bulk goods
- Crafted goods
- Quality goods
- Magical goods
Resources:
- Mines
- Water
- Farms
- Woods
Travel:
- Guides
- Caravans
- News
Defence:
- Walls
- Militia
- Patrol
- Troops

---

Another option would be to use something like Greg's Stolze's REIGN game.

Here:
http://www.gregstolze.com/reign/

stat up a city as a company?

Thomas
2007-01-11, 05:03 PM
Hm, only 2% of children become adults every year? "Adult" being 16 or older, I'd think it would be closer to 1/16, or 6.25%. As you have it, only 1 out of every 3 kids makes it to adulthood. (Might be doing that wrong, it's been awhile since math class).

1 out of 3 born survive to adulthood? That's pretty good in a medieval society. Of course, if we assume all D&D magics available as presented in the DMG and PHB, then it should be 3 out of 3, really.

Fax Celestis
2007-01-11, 05:33 PM
You may want to check out the Box-o-Flumph Instant Kingdom Generator (http://downloads.redblade.org/).

Dervag
2007-01-11, 08:52 PM
What you need is a percent mortality rate for each age cohort and a percentage of people who age into the next cohort, in each year.

For instance, if children are equally likely to be of any age, then every year about 6% of all the living children in the city become young adults. Of course, that's not correct for high infant mortality rate. It would take more time than I have right now to do the math, but you could have a figure like 'every year 5% of young adults die and 4% of young adults become aged adults'.

Tough_Tonka
2007-01-11, 09:12 PM
What about community resources, why does the town become a popular destination. Does it have fertile farmlands, places to mine minerals, is it closed to the ocean etc.

I'm not sure about randomly rolling these qualities, but I think a good type of city building campaign shouldn't rely on static resources alone. There should probably be resources that are easy to acquire, example farmland and forest. Later on there could be the discovery of gold or ancient ruins in the near by mountains. THere should probably be a limit any of the resources are the amount that can be used in one year.

As the story develops there should also be rules about neighboring communities. How they interact settling disputes and whatnot.

Nad
2007-01-12, 08:02 AM
Thank you all for your replies.

Telonius, the children growth of 1/16 is an amazingly simple but wonderful idea, thank you.

Yakk your plethora of information is appreciated. I'm focusing on the monthly events that take place at the moment, there will be much more to come when I can reference your post.

Fax, thank you for the link, that program is nice and might provide some use a little later when I have things hashed out. Basically it's what I want to do but I can't manipulate that data enough.

Dervag, I'd like to keep the mortality due to disease and accidents as random events. The only people I want to see dying naturally will be elderly. I know this is un-realistic but it's simple and simple is the focus here.

TT, we actually have chosen that for this game but I don't want it to figure into the actual mechanics of the city growth at all. Modifiers will be added due to events - such as a good harvest, treasures found, etc but for now I'm focusing less on those modifiers and the basic system.


With that said, I'd like to nail this growth system into place. So aging is tabled for now.

Not counting modifiers for events, there should be base line growth and aging per month. Here is the calendar we're using and the comparable months:

Fireseek - January
Readying – February
Coldeven – March
Growfeast – 1 week festival
Planting - April
Flocktime - May
Wealsun – June (Ceremony of Turning)
Richfeast – 1 week festival
Reaping - July
Goodmonth - August
Harvester - September
Brewfeast – 1 week festival
Patchwall – October
Ready’reat - November
Sunsebb - December

The months are there for reference for an American mid-western climate, my apologies to any readers in the southern hemisphere or on another continent.

So for Sunsebb, Fireseek and Readying, the base growth is going to be 0% from the fact that almost no one is going to migrate in winter.

Coldeven, Planting and Flocktime will count as spring and Growfeast is not getting a growth roll since it's only a week long. Since spring is when most settelers would be willing to move, let's got with 4% growth.

Wealsun, Reaping, Goodmonth are our summer. Again, Richfeast is not getting a growth roll. Since summer is less of a time for migration than spring but still a good time for migration, let's say 3% growth.

Finally, fall consists of Harvester, Patchwall and Ready'reat. Less people are going to be willing to move during fall and be more inclined to dig in for the winter. However, there will be some willing to move on, so let's go with 1.5% growth. As usual, Brewfeast get's no growth.

I'm considering adding a fluctuation per month, something like a 1D8 (-1% through 2.5% based off of .5% incriments) with that fluctuation range possibly changing per month.

So after we determine how much growth there is, the growth needs to actually occur.

When a new citizen comes into town, we roll on two seperate charts. The first is the kind of person coming in, the breakdown I have currently is Peasant, Shop Owner, Artisan, NPC. Each type has a chart to go with it.

40% Peasants are non-skilled laborers, private guards (lvl 1 warrior NPC class), elderly, beggars, clergy members, peddlers, students and thieves.

30% Shopowners are people who own their own business but lack what would be an artisan skill: money changers, sages, butchers, barbers etc

25% Artisans are highly skilled people, blacksmiths, glass maker, toy makers etc

5% NPCs are citizens of special value. High priests, retired aventurers, a noble, etc. These characters will typically have a character sheet and will interact with the PCs.

After determning what kind of immigrant we have, we determine their family situation.

50% Single, 25% Married, 15% Married with child, 10% Married with children (1d4)

After this, we determine where the citizen lives based off of their profession. At the start of the city, there will be only one district but as time passes, we will add more. That will figure in later for now, that's just another can of worms.

I'd like to hear your feedback or brainstorming on this system, thanks!