... now with 35% more arrogance!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Impromptu Towns

Here's a slightly-modified table version of the information in the Hamlet, Village, Town post from Friday.

You can use either HTML version on Google Docs (which gives you the option to copy and paste) or the PNG version, which looks pretty.

To use the table, pick the size of your settlement and note its column on the table. Read the first five rows straight across, up to your selected column, to find out what's generally available. Roll the dice indicated for Miscellaneous Trades to find out how many other crafts or trades are represented in the settlement; write this down as a "trade counter". Thus, all you need to record for a new settlement is something like this:
Ducksborough (Small Village)
exports: duck meat and bags of down
has: food/down packer, blacksmith, weekly market, tavern, priest, posse when needed
trades: 2
Edit: As mentioned here, I forgot to include the blacksmith indicated on the table.

When players state they are looking for a glassblower, a basketweaver, an armorer, or some other craftsperson:
  1. Roll the dice to figure out how many tradespeople there are in that trade, subtracting 1 or 2 dice if the craft is uncommon or rare (if the number of tradespeople per trade is already 1d6 or less, subtract a flat modifier of 1 or 2 instead of reducing the number of dice.)
  2. If the number of tradespeople is less than 1, that trade or craft is not available locally.
  3. If the number of tradespeople is 1 or more, lower the "trades" counter by 1 and write the name of that trade after the numeral; when the trades counter is 0, any search for a new type of trade or craft will fail.
  4. Roll the dice, if necessary, to determine how many people practice the new trade or craft and record this number after the trade name.
When the players state they are looking for ordinary schmoes to serve as porters, guards, torchbearers, or whatever, roll for the number of hirelings available that week. Subtract the number of hirelings reported dead or missing; this penalty can be reset by successfully returning without losses or taking a long break, long enough for people to forget how dangerous associating with those clowns really is.

Fill in names, personalities and other details for NPCs as needed.

5 comments:

  1. Yay! A table :) Thanks for sharing. This could prove very useful for my game.

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  2. Yep, so digging on this! You are basically (almost) allowing the Players to determine what 'Trade' is there, assuming it is a typical type of trade.

    I am curious how you would handle the fact that they are looking for 3 crafts persons; glassblower, basket weaver, and an armorer and there is only two 'trades' available in Ducksbourough?

    I am assuming any crafts person of a type that doesn't somehow relate to the Service is uncommon, and if it (the settlement) isn't near a settlement that doesn't have that service, it would be rare in the market as well? Assuming there was a market in the settlement that might have it?

    I really like this, thinking I will see about expounding on it just a bit to show relationships with near settlements. Just not sure how to do it at the moment...

    The Bane

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  3. @The Bane: Started to answer your question in a comment, but Blogger doesn't like my mark-up, so I'll post it instead.

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  4. Thanks! Into my toolbox it goes :)

    ReplyDelete