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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silveras" data-source="post: 1276468" data-attributes="member: 6271">I think I would recommend a combination of MMS:WE and S&D, depending. Birthright and Empire are a bit too high a level for that (though Empire scales down better). MMS:WE is geared around the acre-by-acre management of a manor, which is about as small a starting point as you can have. From there, it depends on how much fantasy you want. MMS:WE is very historically, grounded. What I have faulted it for in the past is being so strongly historical, it does not discuss anything varying from its model (humans in a temperate land region with a particular mix of terrains). S&D is more inclusive of fantasy variations, but its assumptions about population demographics seem way off. Realistically, for a band of settlers in the wilderness, MMS:WE and S&D is better than either alone. MMS:WE will give you a good base on what that first tiny settlement is like. Once they get rolling, and the population gets big enough (through recruitment, presumably) to support more sophistication, you can start mixing in more concepts from S&D. I don't think any of these systems really addresses the needs of a campaign where the PCs are leading 100 or so survivors fleeing the destruction of their homelands (ie., can't recruit more people, can't purchase additional supplies). MMS:WE discusses this a bit, as well as S&D. Waiting for spontaneous settlers is much less effective than advertising. MMS:WE mentions offering land to the workers who build your tower, for example. Depending on the attitude of the surrounding lands, you may be able to "buy" peasants from a local lord (essentially pay a tax or penalty to free them from obligations to their existing lord so they can move); others might take offense at your attempts to recruit settlers. In a medieval-style society, though, people do not just pick up and move whenever they feel like it (at least, the ones who are likely to be good citizens don't). S&D's population growth rules, by the way, address the normal birth rates but not much in the way of recruiting tenants (it "just happens").I don't think you will find hard-and-fast rules for the scene you described, mostly because the circumstances of each game world will be very different. A lot of role-played diplomacy with the lords of any bordering lands would be needed, for example, to recruit people from them without having their armies steamroll over your fledgling tower. If there are no bordering lands, well, there are also no people to recruit, then. Well, yes and no. It does mention the need to recruit people if there are no settlers already in the lands the PCs have obtained. In the PDF I mentioned, discussing how to vary the population in a province, I hit on this slightly. I recommend increasing the population density by 1 per generation (20 years for humans, 5 years for Orcs, etc.). That, of course, is appropriate for managing a kingdom of hundreds of manors, not a single manor.</blockquote>

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