'Surviving in the wilderness' and 'prospering village' mini-games?

[Starfox]

With 300 people, do you mean that as the total population? Or working age adults? Or milita-worthy adults?

A population of 300 souls all counted is probably to small to be self-sufficient. You only have about 150 full-time workers in such a place, and many of these would be managing households. Say abut 100 of them are in production. With 3 people to each venture, this makes for about 30 ventures total - farms, tanners, smiths... It's cutting it close to maintain a stable medieval technology society on 300 people and no trade.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A lot of 4e is d20 anyway, so you might want to look at Testament for ideas of how to mechanically handle village survival.

 

[ajanders]

It sounds like one of those big burly skill challenges from the 4.0 DMG 2.
I've never done one of these before, but I was looking for a challenge today.

Let me ruminate.

 

[ajanders]

Ruminated now...

4E Dnd “Civilization”

Basic assumptions of the system

1.This general system will need to be tuned specifically for different campaign settings.
2.The purpose of this system is to give PC's motivations and contexts for their adventures: it should not replace the adventures.
3.Improving the health of the community occurs as a reward for quests: DM's should use both experience and treasure quest awards when using this system.

Basic assumptions of the community
1.Three things define the health of the community: demography, security, and economics.
1.Demography: is the population of the community growing, shrinking, or stable?
2.Security: is the community safe from outside threats (with walls, a militia) and inside threats (town watch, inquisitors)
3.Economy: what resources are constantly available to the community?
All three of these things must improve for the community to grow. PC's can undertake adventures to improve all three of these things.
2.The community was static before the PC's came: the population was pretty stable, the community was adequately defended from internal and external threats, and the community exploited all the resources it had access to.
3.The community is the biggest point of light in a day's normal travel: it may be surrounded by smaller points of light, however.
4.Contact with communities of its size or larger is relatively rare, on a monthly, seasonal, or even yearly basis.

Styles of play
A game can use this system with varying levels of intensity, depending on player and DM preferences.

Narrative
This is the default style of play in 4E: the DM decides if the community grows or shrinks, and why. PC's may or may not be able to affect the health of the community. This system is unnecessary at this level.

“Minigame”
PC's gain some significant portion of experience from community improvement, but not all of their experience. If PC's have one encounter related to improving each of the community's demographic, security, and economic health, improving the community becomes the equivalent of a dungeon delve, and provides one third of the experience necessary to gain a level.

“Birthright”
The entire game revolves around growing the community. If PC's have three encounters (or a dungeon delve) for each of the community's demographic, security, and economic health needs, this will provide all the experience necessary to gain a level.

Where do we go from here?
Designing skill challenges to support the minigame level of play. After that, we'll see if anyone is interested in more.

First skill challenge designed: look here
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/270696-skill-challenge.html

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Er, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. While there might not be forests in the middle of the Sahara, it is definitely possible to have forested areas in the midst of a desert.

Look at Arizona on Google Maps - dry, brown deserts broken up by swaths of forest along waterways and on the North-facing slopes of mountains and hills.

Tucson gets less than 12 inches of rain a year, but there are Pecan orchards in the outskirts of the city.

With irrigation, it would be possible to have crops and even orchards a fair ways off from a river. This is certainly possible with technology more primitive than that assumed in a baseline D&D campaign and could be further improved with magic.

I wasn't aware of some of that, thanks for the info. (Or, you learn something new every day.)

Irrigation systems could actually provide a fair amount of inspiration for a campaign.

Large systems of irrigation canals might be hard for villagers to maintain in a 'points of light' style campaign, and perhaps there might be canals near the town that have fallen into disrepair with the collapse of an old empire (shadows of China's Grand Canal).

The rebuilding of a canal system by the PCs would be an easy way for them to impact the town through normal adventuring. They could safeguard reconstruction attempts from orc raiders, or exterminate the lizardfolk that are have dammed the canals to make an artificial marsh.

The establishment of proper irrigation could rapidly expand the towns food production and population.

I like the canal ideas, good job. And XP for you.

One other thing to consider if there is hardly any interaction with other communities is the problem of inbreeding. This could be used as an incentive for the characters to open up travel, or it might disturb the players.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

too small?

I don't think a population of 300 keeps a village from being self-sufficient. I have spent time trekking in very remote parts of the Himalayas, and have stayed in quite a few isolated, self sufficient villages with fewer people than this. I'm talking places cut off from the rest of the world for 9 months per year because the 5000 meter passes that lead to them have 10 feet of snow dumped on them.

What you lose in a small village are specialists. But a village can easily survive off a combination of farming, hunting/scavenging, and herding. They can trade for simple implements (pots, metal tools, etc) when the opportunity arrives, but get by without them.

Ken

With 300 people, do you mean that as the total population? Or working age adults? Or milita-worthy adults?

A population of 300 souls all counted is probably to small to be self-sufficient. You only have about 150 full-time workers in such a place, and many of these would be managing households. Say abut 100 of them are in production. With 3 people to each venture, this makes for about 30 ventures total - farms, tanners, smiths... It's cutting it close to maintain a stable medieval technology society on 300 people and no trade.

 

[Roger]

The most detailed system I know for handling population centres is in The World Tamer's Handbook for Traveller: The New Era. It's scaled for tech levels down to the stone age, though.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[Nellisir]

I don't think a population of 300 keeps a village from being self-sufficient.

There's self-sufficient, and there's self-sufficient. 300 people can live quite well on their own, but not without some modicum of trade. The OP seems to rule out trade, so it's not clear how the villagers get metal to repair anything, or make arrowheads.

What you lose in a small village are specialists. But a village can easily survive off a combination of farming, hunting/scavenging, and herding. They can trade for simple implements (pots, metal tools, etc) when the opportunity arrives, but get by without them.

Exactly. There's not a lot of work work in a small hamlet for a dedicated cooper (makes barrels) or shopkeeper (esp. with no trade), never mind an armorer or locksmith or just about anything else. As I said initially, you'll have a few people with specialized equipment, and everyone else will do whatever needs doing. most houses will have looms, for instance - no dedicated weaver or cobbler.

 

[RangerWickett]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I'm going to see what I can come up with/track down/patch together.

The tech level of the village is sort of early bronze age (albeit with magic-using PCs making some things much easier). Most arrows are stone. Most weapons are wood. Most armor is hide. But the respected folks have access to some metal, though supplies are very limited.

 

[jasonbostwick]

What kind of opportunities are there for PCs to find supplies that can benefit the village?

Is the village the first civilized outpost in this area, or is it on the remains of some fallen ancient civilization?

The PCs could venture to the ruins of an old dwarven forge in the mountains, fighting the resident kobolds in hopes of finding some leftover ingots of tin.



If the PCs want to relieve some of the villagers from subsistence farming they could focus their efforts on hunting big game. Certainly some of the villagers would be hunters already, but in a fantasy world there are bigger, meatier creatures that only adventurers would be able to bring down.

A single dire boar weighs about 2000lbs according to the SRD - a back of the envelope calculation says that should give enough meat to feed two people for a year if properly preserved.

This newly available labour could be used to help build defensive walls for the village, or to maintain a standing militia.

It doesn't seem like immigration to the area will be likely, and the timespan of a normal D&D game wouldn't really allow for normal population growth to be seen, so converting farmers into labourers would be the easiest way to 'grow' the town.