Building a settlement from scratch, how much progress by month?

[Lanefan]

One needs wood for shacks, and that wood needs to be logged.

As you mention plank structures above, that wood also needs to be sawn in bulk, which means one of the first things you need is some sort of sawmill.

Without that, you're left with logs - fine for cabins, palisades, and similar but not so useful for anything more refined...or anything large unless the settlers have a competent engineer among them.

The point of this game is for everything to be primitive. If players won't enjoy that, this is not the campaign for them.

The difference between boat 1 and boat 2 is "will you be living in a tent or a temporary structure".

Hell, look at The Stolen Lands adventure path, which is sending Pcs on a Hexcrawling adventure in the middle of the wilderness, and then just handing them gold and sayin g "Go build a kingdom" once they've explored it. The only "tavern" is a trading post at the far edge of a territory the size of Maine.

This is more or less that, except the kingdom/settlement/bla is being built at the same time as the exploration.

Much will also depend on the composition of your PC group. If three of them are Dwarves, for example, mining and stone/metal craft will become way more important than if they're all Elves. If they're all Hobbits, they'll build farms before anything else. And so on.

 

[Lackofname]

As you mention plank structures above, that wood also needs to be sawn in bulk, which means one of the first things you need is some sort of sawmill.

I mention plank structures above because that's what Paizo's module says. Although even their own product only lists one building as planks, so they clearly didn't have a lot. It's probably what they brought with them.

If I wanted to be incredibly fussy, I'd look at the type of wood available; the module mentions that the island where their stuff takes place has palm trees, but palm makes poor wall building material (outside of like, thin logs) so the preferred is pine and oak, found further inland. However a little googling shows that palm species are the most common in the Central/South American jungles I'm basing this on.

But I'm not going to be that fussy.

Much will also depend on the composition of your PC group. If three of them are Dwarves, for example, mining and stone/metal craft will become way more important than if they're all Elves. If they're all Hobbits, they'll build farms before anything else. And so on.

Oh, PCs won't be the actual architects and building planners; it's a rare player who would enjoy that sort of thing. The PCs, being troubleshooters for the settlement, get their work duty cut in half, and said work will be handwaved as just "general help". Although I figure their class and skills would be more indicative of the type of contribution they would be better at.

 

[Argyle King]

Depending upon how much detail you want, I would recommend GURPS Fantasy and/or GURPS Low-Tech.

Yes, they are game books. However, a large chunk of both books talks about the logistics of how things historically worked (and what technologies were available at various times) for settlements. Fantasy has more detail for fantasy elements and building a fantasy setting; Low-Tech is more geared toward the nitty gritty of how things were done with various forms of real-world technology. There's enough detail that a common joke about some sections of the books involve being able to use them as a source for a college paper.

It may be a bit of information overload for you, depending on how in-depth you are looking to get. On the other hand, they may make a good crunchy counterparts to the online searches which others have recommended.

Preview of Fantasy Table of Contents

 

[Lackofname]

@Johnny3D3D I appreciate the suggestion, as well as other tips like "Look up books on this" and such, but I honestly am not intent on being that detailed.

I came to the message boards hoping someone would be able to tell me. I've done this before, asking how far settlements should be from one another, and got a lot of helpful answers. So ultimately care only as far as it is interfering with my sense of believability and the potential conflict of what I want from the setup. "Good enough", in other words.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh, PCs won't be the actual architects and building planners; it's a rare player who would enjoy that sort of thing. The PCs, being troubleshooters for the settlement, get their work duty cut in half, and said work will be handwaved as just "general help". Although I figure their class and skills would be more indicative of the type of contribution they would be better at.

Ah - from your initial write-up I took it that the PCs were driving all of this.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Your map basically looks like Jamestown. I'm sure that was probably the inspiration.

My only problems with it are:

1. You'd build the first settlement somewhere with access to fresh water. Either a river or a lake. Wells are expensive (in terms of labor) and springs are complicated by a lot of things. Assuming your people have water mill technology, rivers are extremely attractive. Mills can be configured to saw logs, grind wheat, etc. It also gets you river travel, fish, etc. There's a very good reason that people build cities on rivers.

2. Nobody wants to live in a strange wilderness without a complete palisade, and simple palisades are fairly easy. That means both that the palisade should be done, and that nobody is sleeping outside the palisade. You might have structures outside the fort, but nobody stays the night out there until you've tamed the wilderness.

3. Individual homes are one of the very last things you build. They're expensive in terms of labor and materials (both construction and heating) compared to great halls and longhouses. They're what you build when everything else you need is done and your settlement is fairly safe and established. There's good reasons that humans often lived in communal structures like great halls and long houses. They're one of the first structures you'd build.

 

[Lackofname]

Your map basically looks like Jamestown. I'm sure that was probably the inspiration.

My only problems with it are:

1. You'd build the first settlement somewhere with access to fresh water. Either a river or a lake. Wells are expensive (in terms of labor) and springs are complicated by a lot of things.

The good thing is that this is a rainforest, so natural water is just a few hours wait. Also Mexico's Yucatan has cenotes, which are natural wells--sinkholes that expose groundwater. The Mayans made heavy use of them. I'm going to say there's one in the settlement's back yard, which while not a well in the center of a palisade, is a stone's throw from safety.

Because I don't actually want them to be on a river, for campaign reasons. So the BS reason I'm going to say is that this was the best site due to a natural harbor.

2. Nobody wants to live in a strange wilderness without a complete palisade, and simple palisades are fairly easy. That means both that the palisade should be done, and that nobody is sleeping outside the palisade. You might have structures outside the fort, but nobody stays the night out there until you've tamed the wilderness.

Yeah I found the unfinished palisade to be a little suspect.

There's good reasons that humans often lived in communal structures like great halls and long houses. They're one of the first structures you'd build.

I didn't know those were lived in! I thought they were just celebratory/official structures.

 

[TheSword]

A palisade and the earthworks to support them is a massive undertaking involving chopping down hundreds of trees of the right size and thickness and would be balanced against identified threats. Unless it was known that the area was particularly dangerous I don’t think this would take precedence over shelter or basic industry needs like weaving, pottery, butchery etc.

Secondly, people were shaping wood for building before mechanized wood mills came along. Three a-frames and a good saw. It’s more Labour intensive but very do-able.

 

[Eltab]

Yes we are on a river, but it is short, steep and full of rocks, doesn't go anywhere interesting, or has eroded its way down to a deep canyon. Nobody uses it as an easy transport route because it isn't one.
Heading out to sea, on the other hand...

 

[Tonguez]

I use Building value/Labour/10+skill = Days

The DMG says a Guildhouse and Trading Post can be built for 5000gp, I’ll assume the same price for a Hall (Longhouse/Barracks). so if I have 5 unskilled workers

Hall 5000gp/5 workers/10 (skill) = 100 days
Of course if you have more workers or a Proficient Carpenter then the job will be done quicker.

You can extrapolate to build a village allocating your fixed pool of Labour Remembering though that Food harvesting also needs Workers to attend to it - indeed for a new colony the first 3-6 months should be focussed on food supply and avoiding starvation