New to DnD have a few questions

[Curlier121]

Is it possible for our characters to start our own town. We just took back a fief that was promised to one of the guys in my party through some mystical deck of cards. So we need people to live there and keep the place up and we were wondering if it was possible to have people settle around it and make it into a small town or city.

[mgshamster]

Is it possible for our characters to start our own town. We just took back a fief that was promised to one of the guys in my party through some mystical deck of cards. So we need people to live there and keep the place up and we were wondering if it was possible to have people settle around it and make it into a small town or city.

Of course!

It's a game of imagination. You can have your characters start wherever you like, so long as everyone in your group agrees on it.

[Tawmis]

Of course!

It's a game of imagination. You can have your characters start wherever you like, so long as everyone in your group agrees on it.

^ This.

As a DM, if the town isn't (all that) populated - I'd have a ton of fun making the party hire guards to protect it from raiders (such as orcs, goblins and kobolds), and how to pay for the guards - settle the occasional local dispute among towns people. I'd have a lot of fun with that as a DM...

[Curlier121]

Our DM had us hire some guards to protect a small village near our fief and we have a yetan not sure if I spelled that right patrolling around it atm. So I guess we can find some stranded travelers or something and see if they’d settle with us and build up a smithy and have them farm the land and stuff.

[Idkwhatmyscreen]

You don't have much else to do with all the gold you collect

A town is going to need about


10-20 farms
A blacksmith
A Tavern
A guard post and Tower
A church
A mason
A cobbler
Other shops as you need them

[lxion]

Not something I would aim to as a DM, but you can do a lot of things with it. Looking for the best craftsmen, setting up trade routes, cleaning out things to gain resources... Could be fun.

[Magzimum]

Is it possible for our characters to start our own town. We just took back a fief that was promised to one of the guys in my party through some mystical deck of cards. So we need people to live there and keep the place up and we were wondering if it was possible to have people settle around it and make it into a small town or city.

Absolutely! It's a good idea! So, if I understand it correctly, you are the proud owners of an empty patch of land? I assume it doesn't already have an established village/town?

If you are nice to your DM, then you come up with something that makes your new town remarkable. Why would any peasant or artisan pick up all his belongings, abandon his current home and move to your new town? Maybe the protection is guaranteed by the local heroes? Maybe the tavern is of world class? Maybe there is an inspiring temple to a god that draws in people?

With something like that, your DM has something to build on. Then the DM can come up with characters that settle in the town.

[Knaight]

If you are nice to your DM, then you come up with something that makes your new town remarkable. Why would any peasant or artisan pick up all his belongings, abandon his current home and move to your new town? Maybe the protection is guaranteed by the local heroes? Maybe the tavern is of world class? Maybe there is an inspiring temple to a god that draws in people?

With something like that, your DM has something to build on. Then the DM can come up with characters that settle in the town.

Much of the same advice applies if you're just aiming for the success of your settlement, niceness to DM aside. There's also ways around some of this - peasants and artisans currently entrenched with homes and belongings would need to abandon them, ransomed prisoners from devastated areas don't necessarily have much in the way of lives to get back to (family to contact, quite possibly, but that's a solvable problem). Actively seeking out displaced people and providing them with a home is a potential strategy, and it potentially syncs up quite well with existing adventuring.


A town is going to need about


10-20 farms
A blacksmith
A Tavern
A guard post and Tower
A church
A mason
A cobbler
Other shops as you need them

I'd add a mill to this list, and very high on it - they're generally one of the first non-farm buildings to crop up, mostly because grinding grain by hand is terrible and needs to be done often. A lot of the rest isn't essential (church, mason, tavern*), though it can't hurt and is likely something the PCs will be able to fund.

That said, this might be a bit overambitious. The large farmstead model of a walled estate, with a large farm, a wealthier farming family group, and then a bunch of farmhands and other workers might work better, particularly if the fief is smaller. It's more the roman villa model than the medieval demense model, but it should work.

[Magzimum]

Much of the same advice applies if you're just aiming for the success of your settlement, niceness to DM aside. There's also ways around some of this - peasants and artisans currently entrenched with homes and belongings would need to abandon them, ransomed prisoners from devastated areas don't necessarily have much in the way of lives to get back to (family to contact, quite possibly, but that's a solvable problem). Actively seeking out displaced people and providing them with a home is a potential strategy, and it potentially syncs up quite well with existing adventuring.

Agreed. There are always people on the move, so it is to be expected that people will settle in the new village if there is a lure to it. Heck, if the characters play it smart (and if the DM allows it), they may even get paid for helping a local lord with a refugee problem!

I just had a vision of a poor DM who suddenly was presented with the daunting task of designing a new village where the players will start living permanently in the campaign. Since this is the idea of the players, it is only nice if they provide a part of the content (based on the decisions that they can take as the owners of the land). I'm a player in a campaign where we just got our own castle. I am working on the design of the pub and the menu. The other players are working on a design of the main keep. Obviously, everything gets checked by the DM, and if we are too ambitious, the price of the keep and pub just goes up.

Maybe the players can describe to the DM which job they would take up in the town, in their downtime? Will they be the pub owners? Will they be the smith? Will they be the aristocratic and arrogant nobles? Maybe there is something in their background that is useful.

[Unoriginal]

Main advice is: talk with your DM.

Only they know what you can or cannot do, in the end, and that kind of things require working together.

The game certainly does include building a village as a possibility (there are rules for that in the DMG). But the master of the game is the one who has to take the decisions regarding it.

[Vogie]

I actually really like this, and am glad your DM is giving you that.

That allows you to do more when you finish quests and encounters other than "gain gold and items". You can resettle refugees to your own town, that smith you rescued is now your smith there in Curlierville, and the more you build up the area the more it attracts it's own issues. It's effectively a recurring plot hook.