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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5597018" data-attributes="member: 26473">A goodly portion of those townsfolk can actually be farmers as well, working the fields in the area immediately surrounding Welford, so while they live in the town proper, they can still make their living at the plow.I didn't see the post immediately before mine in the queue until after I hit submit, so I missed the part about rough terrain on two sides and the lake on a third. A substantial portion of the townsfolk are likely to be fishermen and the community of craftsmen which service them: boatwrights, sail makers, net menders, coopers, merchants selling salt, and so on. (And if you have merchants selling salt, Welford will likely have a salt warehouse or two - might be time to homebrew a salt golem, or an salt-crystal earth elemental variant.)So Welford has one hinterland which is the lake, the domain of fishermen and traders, and another which is intensively farmed. The rough terrain can be handled a number of ways; a mature community may terrace the hillsides for additional farmland, but perhaps more likely is pasturage for goats and sheep, orchards - olives, apples, citrus, walnuts, et cetera - or vineyards, or forestry - Welford uses a lot of wood, for charcoal, boats, barrels for storing salted fish, et cetera. This population will be even smaller and more decentralized than the farmers and fishermen in Welford proper or the farming hinterland of the town.  If they are prosperous enough to produce a surplus for trade, you could have a tannery for leather hides, storage tanks for olive oil or wine, and so on in Welford proper.Penniless and starving in an alley isn't an amenity, nor is it particularly convenient.People move to town if there's work to be had there, and in most cases that requires a thriving class of craftspeople and merchants producing a tradeable surplus of goods and a trading hinterland in which those goods are in demand. Absent that, farming or itinerant laboring must provide, and the latter will likely move around a lot - they're going to be Welford's underclass."You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />This has long been a pet peeve of mine with many published fantasy settings - a town, or worse, a city, with a little ring of farms around it and a day's journey to the next settlement. The gorge of the economic geographer in me rises . . . <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />It is more work, but you can also have some fun with it. In Lower Welford is a notable brewer, producer of the most popular ales in Welford; one of the Welford merchants actually trades the brewer's surplus to the other towns on the lake, and they're doing well enough that a barrel of the brewer's best is sent each year to an important lord or magnate in Brightmoon to further burnish their reputations. In Welford-on-Welstream there's a shrine devoted to an important local deity, and each year the merchants of Welford make a pilgrimmage to the site, leading a long procession of merchants, craftspeople, musicians, clerics, and so on, bearing some sort of relic, waving banners and showing off their wealth and status at a great feast following the procession. In Eastford, an apple tree is said to have grown from the seeds of a core tossed off by a local hero before he went on to his glory (or doom) - knights may be found under the tree, holding a vigil before beginning a quest. And strangers are warned to stay away from Welford-by-the-Wood - druids control the village and are rumored to seek sacrifices from among passers-by.A handful of merchants, a moneylender, a couple of properous farmers, the rich mercer, a boatwright, the head priest of a most important temple in town (likely the deity of lakes and waters) - there's the core of your watch, them and their servants or journeymen. It's a source of considerable prestige.Btw, did you know that's what is portrayed in Rembrandt's De Nachtwacht?I don't know if any of this is helpful or not, but I hope you can get some use out of it.</blockquote>

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