D&D General Campaign Idea: Building the Palace of Versailles - what would you do?

[Tonguez]

So I've been looking at the Bastion rules and thinking about Domain Management and got the idea of designing a campaign where the PCs are part of the Building of the Palace of Versailles.

Spoiler: real world history

So in 1600 Versailles was a small muddy village, built around the old parish church and manor house, with poor soils on low, marshy ground surrounded by wooded hills. In 1623 Louis XIII had a hunting lodge built and then in 1661 Louis XIV commissioned the Architect Louis Le Vau to expand the lodge into a palace, and the André Le Nôtre to layout ornate gardens with the first Royal Fete taking place in the gardens in 1664. The Palace took 21 years with Louis officially moving his court there in 1682.

So PCs might be Architects-Builders, Landscapers, Court Envoys, Guards, Labourers, Staff of the Hunting Lodge or local Villagers

Adventures could include negotiating Court ettiquette and intrigues, dealing with the local villagers, church and nobility, managing building logistics, recruiting and deploying labour, exploring the Versailles forest and marsh, keeping workers healthy and confronting opposition both natural and supernatural - marsh hags, ghosts, druidic curses, fey. The PCs have three years from initial recruitment in 1661 to the first planned Fete in 1664 (the whole project to 21 years)

Anyway does anyone know of any published or online modules that focus on a similar Building Project?
Any useful rules you can think of?
Have you got any ideas of how you'd do this kind of campaign?
How do you handle the passage of years in 'construction time'?

I'm already considering putting an old half submerged ruin in the marsh as a dungeon and will feature les fees - lutins, gobelins, farfadet, melusine (Secretly King Louis might himself be in league with a Fae Lord - which will eventually tie-in to the Hall of Mirrors)

 

[TigerDude]

I for one would prefer to adventure instead of being a craftsperson or contractor. Are you building it on top of an ancient tomb?

 

[kigmatzomat]

Pendragon work in seasons, where each "module" is a year. I never played it, but you have to design your campaign around this philosophy, where you campaign in summer, spending fall getting to a wintering position, spend winter maintaining gear & teceuiting, spring getting resupplied/training and repeat in summer.

Or in your case, deliver supplies in spring, major construction in summer, fall is to put up roofing/walls for winter, focus on interiors/furnishings in winter.

I would switch the campaign a smidgen. Make it building a temple where demons and other forces are trying to prevent it. You can have attacks on the workers, at the stone quarry, poison the food supply, steal icons, sneak in corrupted workers who defile the holy ground, competing religions or nobles try to get the ruler to redirect assets,
etc, etc.