Design and Building New Towns!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

I'm in the process of designing and building some 8-12 new towns in my campaign that are part of a new environment for the players. One of the players is in the process of refounding an ancient elven kingdom, and she is the new queen. However, her land that she seeks to rule is currently populated by diverse races and populations of monsters, with normal elves actually only making up a minority of about 30%. The environment includes several city-states and towns, all strange and mysterious. She is also interesting in sending out settlers and surveyors to begin building new towns and establishing new settlements.

What kind of elements should be in the already existing towns? Any ideas for unusual characters, buildings, and so on would be interesting too. How do you go about building and designing your towns? How do you determine who is important, and what kind of businesses and resources exist? What tips or techniques do you use to develop the social and economic issues that are most important to each such location or individual community?

How extensively do you map out your towns and the buildings that comprise them?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Hand of Evil]

Two Web sites to help out:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

http://www.lucidphoenix.com/dnd/demo/business0.asp

 

[Turanil]

However, her land that she seeks to rule is currently populated by diverse races and populations of monsters, with normal elves actually only making up a minority of about 30%.

If there are several races and populations of monsters, at 30% of the total, the elves are the majority (or come second), not "a minority". Unless all other races and populations are in a cohalition and the elves not.

She is also interesting in sending out settlers and surveyors to begin building new towns and establishing new settlements.

It takes time to create a new town (decades at least), and since elves are long-lived they are even less in a hurry...

 

[Hand of Evil]

When mapping it is location and I ask myself why is there a town here. There are four answers (some may have more)

1) Port - Ships can really only dock at a few places and they are not as common as people think.
2) Resources - Something in the area, mine, wood, water hole. The town will be know for it and the type of people there will be to support that industry and the movement of that good.
3) Support - Farming really, town or village is in the shadow of a larger city (less than a day travel).
4) On the Road to - meaning that it just happens to be on the road and mostly is just a rest stop. This will have business that cater to travellers.​

 

[mmadsen]

If there are several races and populations of monsters, at 30% of the total, the elves are the majority (or come second), not "a minority". Unless all other races and populations are in a cohalition and the elves not.

If the elves make up less than half of the total population, they have/are a minority. If there are more elves than member of any other race, the elves have/are a plurality. If the elves make up more than half of the total population, they have/are a majority.

 

[mmadsen]

Hand of Evil makes an important point: every settlement should be along the coast or along a river -- or, even more likely, where multiple rivers and/or the coast come together. Otherwise the settlement can't support significant trade.

 

[mmadsen]

Definitely check out Medieval English Towns and the various sites it links to.

 

[Warehouse23]

When founding a new town, I tend to look for grasslands or plains, particularly near a river, unless I'm going to have to fight to defend the town, in which case a hill is in order. Next I think about the long-term industrial sustainability of a town, in particular, looking for hills or deserts which might contain oil, coal, saltpeter, or uranium. Then I stop playing civ 3.

For a campaign world, it is important to decide what is in the town and what goes on in it. Does one town have the best annual fair? Are the roads to a "holy city" or one containing a shrine choked with pilgrims? Are there rumors of gold in them thar hills, which will allow a boom town to spring up, only to be all but deserted next time the PCs come through?

When colonizing new lands (i.e., sending out settlers), one should consider that almost any place worth living has already been settled before. Previous inhabitants (or their ghosts) might not take kindly to the interlopers setting up shop.

 

[Janx]

towns happen at crossroads. Those crossroads might be actual roads, or rivers and such. Basically, they happen where the most people would likely pass, on their way to somewhere else.

For water, they happen where the best port location would be to receive ships AND have goods delivered overland to the town (to get on the boat). Thus, a crossroad of water path, and dirt path.

For roads, they happen where you'll have the most people passing through with supplies, or needing supplies. Sure, you could plop a town in the middle of a long road, but you'd get half as much business than if you plopped it down where 2 roads cross.

If you doubt that, go watch a real road that is slowly getting urbanized (FM1960 and FM2920 in Houston is a good example of this). First, the gas stations move in, at INTERSECTIONS. Then strip malls, restaurants and shops get put it, adjacent to the intersections, which, as they sprawl, they spread out along the road. Like most small towns, they form a line along the road(s). Houses and homes fill in on the spaces, usually behind the businesses along the road (which also segregates the locals' houses from the main road and visitors traffic, which they don't need).

Thus, and unplanned town will always look like - or a + with businesses along the main street (ever wonder why they call it main street), with houses filling in the gaps.

Now a planned town or city might evolve a bit differently, due to a city planner's guidelines for where key buildings and roads WILL be. But even then, the pattern I described above will still take over in all the empty spaces.

Now a good question would be, how many houses/buildings based on population. You could assume a medieval setting family lives in the shop (probably upstairs) in a town. There's probably some normal housing and apartments (renting is not a new concept). If you assumed the average family size of 5, you could guesstimate a building count of 5 people per building. It would be close enough, and some buildings would hold more, some less, but it averages out, and gives you a good sized city for the population.

there are lots of population generating tools out there:
http://www.aarg.net/~minam/towns.cgi
http://www.irony.com/mkcity.html
http://www.irony.com/village.html

Once you got your population and building count, you don't need to actually define WHERE everything is right away (a rule of DungeonCraft, don't make more than you need). But if you do draw a city, you'll know how many buildings to roughly put down.
At best, you really just need to know WHAT common shops are present, such as:
jewelry, gemsmith
armorer
weapons smith
blacksmith
sawmill
general store
eclectic items shop (ie. used and/or stolen oddities)
magic shop (potions, scrolls, spell components, real magic items)

Though in real life, there may be competing shops, initially, you only really need to invent one of each (or leave out ones that don't apply or are unavailable).

Janx

 

[mmadsen]

To borrow from Jack Vance's Dying Earth (and Robin Laws' Dying Earth game), make sure each town has its own peculiar customs (especially festivals), outrageous clothing (for the well-to-do), and unusual cuisine.