City Building Campaign Help

[Kiassic91]

Hello my friends!
So me and a few friends are running a city building campaign. Quick background is that Old king died, gave his kingdom to split between his two sons. One son is kinda cool, the others a weenie. The weenie son took over the Castle and main kingdom, while the other son was sent off to kinda build his own area. We were sent of to build a little village with us (6 players) and 15 other viable workers.
So now. We started with nothing. Weve built a few houses, but what are some main things and priorities you think i should focus on? i am an artificer gnome, and kinda the unofficial mayor of the little town. my thoughts are i need:
1 More houses
2 Tavern
3 Blacksmith
4 General Stores
So please. What does a little town need to survive!
Also we are right next to woods and a river. Thank you all In advance!

[Kerilstrasz]

Ok.. lets see..

** Not in this order.. I just say what you will need up to a point.. you say the order according to your needs **


1st of all..
You need Houses for you, the party. (ideally 1 big house for all of you)
2nd..
Houses for the workers (make them good - happy workers = good and loyal workers)
3rd..
House for the king (temporary until you got a townhall up and running)
4th
You have a river.. so go for a flour mill, a lumber chainsaw mill and if you have olive trees nearby milling stones mill (with these you will increase production at least tenfold and you may export top quality oil for trading income)
5th
Inn/Tavern so you can entertain your population, provide shelter for travelers and experts you may need to invite to help you with town's construction.
6th
Storage houses and food silos
7th
Walls (wood at 1st.. if there is need, upgrade to stone later)
8th
some well placed outposts ( not for defend but for better scouting the area) later you may reinforce them if needed to act as defend positions
9th
Stables
10th
Areas for irrigation & animals of breed
11th
blacksmith
12
tavern will serve as shop for everything at 1st.. as population grows will need more shops
13
At some point when population starts growing you ll need a keep (that will serve as barracks too) & later with further population growing, you ll need to upgrade it into a fort)
14
scattered hunting, lumber and scout cabins/posts around the town

well... i could keep going on and on as population grows.. but i think these are a good start...

keep in mind that before you start building you have do the following:
Plan ahead for everything.. make schematics for roads, houses, utilities etc etc..
it will be much easier if you have planned extra room for, lets say, keep upgrade to fort, instead of not and having later to demolish and rebuild or move it or build a secondary at a different location.
Same goes for every building..

At 1st your house (party's house) will serve as Sheriff's office and you as sheriff's// later you need to find a sheriff so you can go adventuring..

[WbtE]

You might want to look into colonial journals for some ideas. If you can't find them for the Thirteen Colonies, then look for 19th-century records about settling the Mid-West, Australia and New Zealand.

I'd suggest building a rudimentary town hall first. Its initial function is communal housing, then as a meeting area once private houses have been built.

[Kudaku]

Are you playing 3.5 or Pathfinder? PF has a fairly comprehensive set of rules for building nations, city states, towns, all the way down to individual houses.

[Kiassic91]

Are you playing 3.5 or Pathfinder? PF has a fairly comprehensive set of rules for building nations, city states, towns, all the way down to individual houses.

3.5. I'll for sure keep these in mind. Especially the pre town schematics. That's a really good idea. Thanks for these!!!

[Emperor Tippy]

What level are you?

And your first priority should be your defenses.

D&D, all settings, is a death world. While walls are kinda worthless against a lot of enemies they will at least slow down the random animals and a number of magical beasts that could otherwise kill a number of your people.

Level is the big thing though.

[Bullet06320]

as already mentioned, city planning ahead of time helps

plan your keep, start simple at first, but leave room to expand as your city grows, and time and resources allow

first off, sustainable water supply, digging wells or cisterns is a priority, at least 2 to start off with, one in the city square for all the citizens and a 2nd one preferably in or next to your stronghold. if there are mountains or rivers nearby, u can plan a more exhaustive aquaduct system later.

aslo u will need a sustainable food industry of sumsort. fields for crops, orchards, pasture for raising cattle and sheep, etc, is there river/lakes/ocean nearby? fishing, crabbing, mollusks make for good eating

wat other natural resources are nearby, timber? for logging operations? any good areas for stone quarrying or mining exploration? sulpher pits? use wats available locally to form the basis of your economy and make the settlement viable long term

2 things to consider is good old fashioned engineering skills are needed for construction, for real world examples of dnd level engineering examin wat the Romans, the Greeks, the ancient Chinese accomplished, there is a lot of literature out there on those subjects, for a more renasaince feel, look up Davincis works for inspiration. the 2nd thing to remember magic, wat spells do your wizards have to make construction easier better stronger, just the walls with fabricate alone, save thousands and thousands of gold and man hours, levitate, dig, tensers floating disc, just to name a few spells, and using summoned or created minions to help with construction. the 2nd ed castle guide has more information on using magic for building castles.

and on the upside if you are using controlled minions, undead or golems is that u also have more troops for defense. you need to consider the local topography when is comes to siting for defense as well, eg one side on a river, build the keep on a hill etc. next to a ravine, all as local conditions allow

[Kiassic91]

What level are you?

And your first priority should be your defenses.

D&D, all settings, is a death world. While walls are kinda worthless against a lot of enemies they will at least slow down the random animals and a number of magical beasts that could otherwise kill a number of your people.

Level is the big thing though.
Were actually level 3. About to be 4. So it's going to be a pretty slow process to start. But I'm just trying to use this information to help the process be smooth.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You want to make at least one automatic reset trap (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost) of Create Food and Water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm). Anyone in town can simply walk over the trap and have a day's worth of food and drink for five people. No farming, no trading for food, no stockpiling food, no hunting for food, etc.

[Ranting Fool]

D&D, all settings, is a death world. While walls are kinda worthless against a lot of enemies they will at least slow down the random animals and a number of magical beasts that could otherwise kill a number of your people.

Level is the big thing though.

While generally true (You can't walk a day in the wilderness without a high chance of bumping into something that wants to kill/eat you) it still makes me laugh :smallbiggrin:

[rmnimoc]

I'd say the 3 most important things for the fledgling city are:
1. Shelter. You already have a few houses, so you are good there (for now).
2. Food. You are by the woods so that isn't a big issue.
3. Defense. Walls in a D&D village are like locks in New York City. Anything that really cares to can get through it without much difficulty, but walls are the difference between dying with no idea what happened and defending yourself when they crush the wall.

----

Specifics:
You have a means of food. You have water. You have basic shelter. All that makes defense priority number one. Your DM probably will give you a bit of leeway on food and shelter, but those monsters will chow down on your workers if you can't properly protect them. You already have basic shelter, but until you get walls you want everyone in a smaller area. If you spread people out between houses you won't know they are all dead until they don't show up all morning. It also makes it a lot easier for whoever is on watch to keep an eye on everyone. The more you have people spread out, the more people you have to have on watch at night to keep them safe. More people on watch means they all get less sleep, and while I don't think there is a mechanic for the effects of spending a few hours awake every night on watch, I don't imagine it is good for productivity. Without people on watch, everyone is an easy snack for the first monster to roam their way. The D&D forests are deadly, no reason to make it easier for them to off your poor workers.
Once you get some basic defenses you can make some more houses and a way to store food, freeing more people up to work. Of course since you are an artificer, you can work together with a cleric to get some Create Food and Water traps, or Purify Food and Drink traps (which if I'm reading right are free and can be created instantly 500 gp and only take a day to make).
After that you should get an Inn to attract travelers, stables a smithy and a general store to make your town a major stop for traders and adventurers, and more defenses because more popularity attracts bandits too.

[Ranting Fool]

I'd say the 3 most important things for the fledgling city are:
1. Shelter. You already have a few houses, so you are good there (for now).
2. Food. You are by the woods so that isn't a big issue.
3. Defense. Walls in a D&D village are like locks in New York City. Anything that really cares to can get through it without much difficulty, but walls are the difference between dying with no idea what happened and defending yourself when they crush the wall.


4: Income: If you want your town to grow keep an eye out for a way for your settlement to make money. (Not heroic amounts of money, that's what adventures are for) Mining/Lumber/food and goods.

5: Population: 21 people make it a camp you'll want to make a place where those poor peasants who don't like the brother who got the keep will want to go. :smallbiggrin: