A small border trading post

I'm designing (redesigning something I didn't like in a module actually) a small border outpost.

It is walled, but not terribly defensible. It is lived in by about 5-6 people; the trader (an expert merchant), his wife (a minor cleric), a blacksmith (expert), a couple of "hands" who do any heavy labor needed (commoners), and their single "guardsman" (warrior).

Local threats are mostly bandits and kobold/goblin level creatures with a few tougher things happening on a rare basis (they'd usually hide/flee from these). Local visitors to the trading post include fur traders, huntsmen, a few farmers and hunter-gatherers, prospectors, and adventurers, plus the bandits themselves sometimes come here.

What sorts of buildings and resources and etc... would you give this place? The source I'm starting with didn't even give the poor residents an outhouse!

hmmm...
for natural resources
a water source,
a small or large tree filled area (for basic building supplies and fuel for fire)
there needs to be some sort of food source weather it is small game, small farm animals(chickens, sheep, ect), some sort of availibility for grain.

building wise
a chapel
a blacksmith shop
a common area for trading
housing for said people you listed
small stable?

npcs
I don't see the need to add any real people or services. you may consider fleshing out some of the regular traders. Ranger or druid or barbarian that can survive on the frontier that trades pelts or jerky he/she makes. Rare herbs or plant life they may be able to locate. Maybe a wine or ale they make with unknown ingredients.

You also want to have "specialty" they trade in. Why does it in fact exist. Is the trader one few who can speak the barbarians language and trades iron/steel weapons to them for various maps/ pelts/ spices they find? Does the trader have in "in" in the city and brings a certain liquors to the locales? Is there a bounty on a certain monster or animal that would draw people to come to there? Is it a government mandated post to also house patrols, provide supplies to restock soldiers, and encourage "peaceful" interaction with the sparse native population of the frontier?

Look at a fort in an old western movie and you should get a good idea what you need, but probably less of it due to size.

Stable with a smithy and living area
store for the merchant to do busines, with the home attached (behind, below, above, etc)
guard and hands quarters
well unless a stream nearby
maybe part of the merchants will be tavern/diner attached as well (diner turns into makeshift inn after hours)
shrine for the wife indoor or outdoor depending on the worshipped.
outhouse
gates for the walls
water storage
food storehouse, like a root cellar.

what type of climate?

A rough wooden palisade, broken by a single gate, surrounds a muddy lot containing three rough-hewn wood buildings.

Immediately inside the gate to the left is a small stable. It's a two story building built that looks like it could fall down at any minute. The lower floor contains enough space to stable four or five horses. The upper floor is a hayloft.

Across from the stable is the blacksmith's workshop, an open-front building with a brick floor. The smith, an exiled dwarf desperate for news of his homeland, sleeps in a small room at the back of the shop.

The main building stands directly opposite the gate. It's a two-story longhouse built from split logs. The front door opens into a largish common room that contains two or three trestle tables, and a half dozen or so rickety benches. Furs and trophy skulls hang from the walls. There's a huge stone fireplace to the right and a bar in the back. A door behind the bar opens into a strongroom where the trader, a younger man determined to make his fortune in the wilderness, keeps his meager stock. A door in the back left corner of the room opens into the kitchen. A door in the front left corner opens into a short hallway that leads to the private rooms where the folks who live here sleep. A stairway next to the fireplace leads up to a low-ceilinged loft where travelers can bed down on piles of fresh straw.

The trader's wife is an idealistic cleric who believes her mission is to minister to travelers crossing this frontier backwater. She keeps a tiny shrine to her god outside between the main building and the stable.

A two-seat outhouse sits behind the main building adjacent to the palisade.

The trading post mostly sells dry goods, cloth, nails, and salt. In 3.X terms it has a gold piece limit of 25 gold. The trader can get more expensive items, but it takes a week or more to fill an order for them.

The trader keeps a masterwork heavy crossbow behind the bar. He has a suit of +1 Studded Leather Armor stored away for emergencies. His wife has a chain shirt and a +1 mace that she received from her order, both are kept in a locked cabinet in her room. She keeps a potion of cure light wounds with her at all times, and she has another three potions buried in her shrine.

The guard, a bitter veteran who was cheated out of his pension, carries a heavy crossbow and a masterwork glaive. He wears chainmail and is the only person on the premises who is regularly armed.

despite the stockade, with only 6 people (and one guard) this place is rather undefensible. so the site of the settlement is very important. very high hill or small island, one or maybe two access points, like single bridge over a chasm.

to make up lack of numbers *, consider giving them a few wardogs. maybe there are traps in the woods too.

(* but could be a relatively large transient -1d10?- population at any moment: farmers, bandits, travellers, peddlers etc.)

Gilladian said:

What sorts of buildings and resources and etc... would you give this place? The source I'm starting with didn't even give the poor residents an outhouse!

Click to expand...

If your outpost doesn't have to deal with threats constantly, then a water source can be nearby; otherwise, the inhabitants will dig a well for their water.

The outhouse will be against the wall of the compound.

If the compound is always having to contend with threats, it will be expanded somewhat to accommodate vistors with stables inside the wall; otherwise, it could be a sturdy building with lamp posts / torches to burn at night.

For the buildings, there'd be a barracks or inn for visitors with the chapel inside and cellar, stables, a blacksmith shop, a storehouse, and the outhouse.

For the defense, if it's not truly defensible then the least they'd have would be a palisade or a moat with wooden stakes and dogs to bark.

Y'all are champions, THANKS!

The particular area is heavily wooded, lightly hilly, and moist-temperate inland (think east-central Ohio). The best farming is either cattle, dairy and poultry. Natural resources include clay and coal. There's also a lot of beaver and other fur-bearing animals, bear, deer, etc...

It is mildly dangerous - I don't see this area as a place where just traveling through puts you at much risk of anything but bandits; however, there ARE goblins and kobolds and mites in the general region. Walls are a real necessity, but an island/moat might be overkill.

I also don't see the military from either of the two (moderately) nearby kingdoms as coming out this far, so it isn't a patrol station; the highroad is a few miles away - the real reason this outpost exists is to serve those who don't WANT contact with those on the road. Either they're the woodsfolk (barbarian types who are reluctant to meet the civilized folk) or criminal types, or just prospector/hunter/adventurer types who try to avoid "the public eye".

Anyway, I think I have enough to go on, here, but if anyone has any other ideas, please speak up! If they don't help me, they might appeal to other readers...

In addition to the other suggestions, I'd make sure they have a refugee: a block house, stone tower, cave, etc.

Haltherrion said:

In addition to the other suggestions, I'd make sure they have a refugee: a block house, stone tower, cave, etc.

Click to expand...

Nod. There's got to be some highly defensible structure.

For a real world example of a frontier trading post, Fort Nisqually in Tacoma, Washington is a great "living history" example -- I very much enjoyed visiting it. It was a Hudson's Bay Company's fur trading post/fort, in the era when the Pacific Northwest's ownership was disputed between the US and British North America (Canada).

Metro Parks Tacoma > Fort Nisqually Living History Museum

"While on a trading expedition down the Sound last Spring with 8 or 9 men, I applied 12 days of our time to the erecting of a store-house 15 by 20...This is all the semblance of a settlement there is at this moment: But little as it is, it possesses an advantage over all the other settlements we have made on the Coast."

--Archibald McDonald,
Founder of Fort Nisqually
May 1833

Given the "outpost" is only 5-6 people, my initial thought is its a small farmstead. The husband/wife originally settled this lightly wooded ravine because of the pretty view of the fast-moving stream below, thinking the soil would be ideal. Seasonal fur traders following the stream quickly revealed an additional revenue source.


A professional's eye quickly condemns the surrounding "palisade" as an attempt to retrofit a picket-fence into a piss-poor, but plausible, defense vs the local wildlife but little else. A pair of cows and single goat roaming freely aound the enclosed area, a tiny open-sided stable offering them shelter, while chickens cluck contently nearby.


The original three-room log cabin has several later additions, the most obvious being a well-ventilated two-story room tacked to the left of the entrance. Its sole window has a wider-than-normal ledge for transactions and a wall-mounted slate listing current furs/prices. A smoke-house/pantry lies downwind behind this main structure.

The so-called "warrior" is actually their now-grown son who spent a year-or-so in the nearest town militia before returning home to assist his elderly parents, bringing a friend or two along for companionship; staying to assit in exchange for room-n-board. His wife maintains an altar to ___ in the main room; offering service for any passing faithful.

The last inhabitant is a retired hunter who likewise offered his expertise in exchange for room-n-board along with a split of whatever additional work comes along. Accustomed to making his own equipment, he's erected a small blacksmithy downwind of the main cabin with an adjoining bedroom overlooking the ravine where he's installed a small watermill carrying water upto the compound.