# How to Design a Village in 5 Easy Steps



## Argyle King

Interesting.  I'll give it a shot.  I'm curious what I can come up with  on the with your article as a guide and trying to quickly wing  something, so here we go.  

*1. Name the village.*

I'm  going to try taking some of the unsuitable words you listed and see if I  can turn them into something usable.  Sometimes, when I'm winging it, a  quick glance at a drink somebody has or a poster behind one of the  players can provide some syllables to inspire.  Cheerios, Hamburger,  Dell...  Hamdell or Dellham seem mostly ok, but perhaps a little plain.   I watched The Hobbit recently, so the desire to work "shire" in there  somewhere hit me.  *Dellhamshire* sounds pretty good.  The 'h' is partially silent.

Sometimes,  a word by itself might not be suitable, but parts of that word added to  something else might be.  Language tends to have patterns of sounds and  syllables which we recognize, and sometimes taking those common sounds  and given them a different order can result in something familiar enough  to be easily accepted by the mind, but made just exotic enough to mask  that you pulled a name from a player's bag of chips or from a popular  game.  If you have more time to prepare, you might even go to one of the  free language translators online and pick out some common letter  patterns from other languages to sprinkle into the names of your world.     


*2. Determine the location of the village*

I want Dellhamshire to have some life to it, but I'll try to settle on something simple and quick.

Dellhamshire  is a small village nestled among a set of rolling hills.  For as far as  the eye can see to the east and west, there are flat plains and  grasslands.  Several days to the North are jagged and harsh looking  mountains.  Roughly a day's journey South from Dellhamshire is the  Cheery Coast and the city of Hamdellton.    

*
3.  Points of Interest*

Overall,  Dellhamshire is a quiet rural community without many of the amenities  found in larger settlements.  However, it is the nevertheless important  to the region.  The largely flat land to the east and west is among the  most fertile in the region, and grain from here is exported to larger  cities for food.  There is also a unique breed of indigo wool sheep bred  by one of the local the farmers.  While Dellhamshire may not have the  wide variety of resources that a larger settlement might, travellers can  easily find Grundy's Bistro, the Wet Thistle Inn, and a blacksmith at  the center of town.  There is also a humble stone tower scarcely two  stories high which serves as a makeshift government or military building  on the rare occasions when it is needed. 


*4. Key People*

Solomon Wyse
A  local farmer who breeds a unique type of indigo wool sheep.  He breaks a  lot of the stereotypes typically associated with a farmer in a small  town.  Easily one of the wealthiest men in Dellhamshire, he is always  dressed in fine clothing.  He owns a large plot of land on the Northern  edge of town and maintains a small private security force.  

Denneris Grundy
A  large powerfully built man with a seemingly constant five o'clock  shadow who can appear rather menacing in spite of being armed with  nothing more than a frying pan and a ladle in most cases.  The owner of  Grundy's Bistro, he's well known among the other residents for his  straight forward approach to solving problems when asked for advice and  for experimenting with a variety of soups and lightly pan-toasted  sandwiches.  

Gwendis Albright
The owner of the Wet Thistle  Inn; Gwendis is a tall and lanky woman with rather plain facial features  and straw-colored hair.  She's naturally suspicious of travellers and  is prone to gossip about the people who stay at her inn.  The inn itself  is a simple building which seems to be scarcely a step up from sleeping  in they hay of a stable.  The common area has only a large fireplace  and a desk at which Gwendis is usually seated.  Each of the available  four rooms has only pile of furs to sleep upon.  

Sergeant Jamison Yoder
A  military veteran, Sergeant Jamison Yoder was recently "promoted" to the  position of constable in Dellhamshire.  He is tasked with ensuring that  Dellhamshire remains secure due to the importance of the food the  village produces for the rest of the region.  He tends to be dismissive  of the importance of his position, and he views it as a punishment to be  stuck in a small town without any promise of "doing anything great"  with his career.  He's evasive with his answers when asked why he would  have been punished.  He is a wiry man of no great stature, but his small  and thin frame is obviously solid as well; he is muscled in such a way  to remind you of perhaps an ever so slightly too thin jungle cat.  He  has a handful of new recruits who were sent here to aid him after  reports of increased goblin sightings made their way to Duke Hamdell of  Hamdellton.  Sergeant Yoder has yet to see a goblin or much of anything  interesting at all during his tenure here and is more than willing to  express such to anyone who will listen.  

Also of note is the  current absense of a blacksmith.  While there is a forge, there is  currently no smith in town.  The previous smith recently died, and a  professional replacement has not yet been found.  In a pinch, a few of  the local farmers can complete simple tasks such as making horseshoes or  simple farm implements, but the quality of the work tends to be poor.  


*5.  Adventures*

I'm  at a bit of a loss here.  Based on some of the personalities and  details I came up with, I have a few vague ideas, but nothing solid at  the moment. If anyone else has an  idea, feel free to share and/or use what I have here as the basis for something else.


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## delericho

Interesting article, but I would reverse #1 and #2. An awful lot of places are named for their location and/or some key local feature - Rivendell probably being the classic example.


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## Hand of Evil

I would add; *Reason for Being*.  Why is the village there?  What is the chief means of income for the village?  This can be things like the only river crossing, logging, mining, support for a fort, cross road, farming, live stock, shrine, location of an event, etc.


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## Morrus

Johnny3D3D said:


> *1. Name the village.*
> 
> I'm  going to try taking some of the unsuitable words you listed and see if I  can turn them into something usable.  Sometimes, when I'm winging it, a  quick glance at a drink somebody has or a poster behind one of the  players can provide some syllables to inspire.  Cheerios, Hamburger,  Dell...  Hamdell or Dellham seem mostly ok, but perhaps a little plain.   I watched The Hobbit recently, so the desire to work "shire" in there  somewhere hit me.  *Dellhamshire* sounds pretty good.  The 'h' is partially silent.




Not that it matters in the slightest, but as a point of interest,  "shire" means "county"; it wouldn't be on the end of a village name.  But that shouldn't stop you using whatever name sounds good to you! 

Also related to this article, I made an English-style town name generator a while back.  Folks might find it useful:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/dnd_view_block.php?id=240


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## Argyle King

Morrus said:


> Not that it matters in the slightest, but as a point of interest,  "shire" means "county"; it wouldn't be on the end of a village name.  But that shouldn't stop you using whatever name sounds good to you!
> 
> Also related to this article, I made an English-style town name generator a while back.  Folks might find it useful:
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/dnd_view_block.php?id=240





Well, yeah, but a lot of the farming doesn't take place in what would be considered the village/town.  As such, the name also refers to the general area around the settlement where crops are grown.  Over time, the name has come to commonly be used to reference the actual settlement where the shops and such reside even though that's not technically correct.  It's one of the oddities of how the local language has evolved.


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## Jhaelen

Hand of Evil said:


> I would add; *Reason for Being*.  Why is the village there?  What is the chief means of income for the village?  This can be things like the only river crossing, logging, mining, support for a fort, cross road, farming, live stock, shrine, location of an event, etc.



This! I think this is actually the first question you should answer. It directly leads you to the answer to the question where to locate it. It will also give you an idea for a good name. The rest is fleshing out, i.e. deciding on interesting features and inhabitants.


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## Dwimmerlied

awesome food for thought, thanks for posting.


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## haakon1

For names, I find it helps for have lived in places with English-origin place names and just name things plainly.  In my case, that was New York, New England, actual England, and Washington State.

To me, a lot of good place names are actually DESCRIPTIVE and tell you something about the place right from the name.  Whether the name comes first or the "reason for being" doesn't much matter, but both being related helps a lot.

Examples:

From New York:
-- Pound Ridge (my hometown) -- it's a hilly, wooded place, where animals were kept
-- Indian Hill -- a hill with an Indian burial ground at the base
-- Hardscrabble Road -- you can tell this was not good farm country
-- Leatherman's Cave -- a cave where an itinerant leatherworker camped when in town
-- Breakneck Ridge
-- Bear Mountain
-- Salt Point (where the Hudson changes from a salt water fjord-like inlet to fresh water river valley)
-- West Point -- a steep river bluff above the Hudson

From merry old England:
-- Oxford -- a town at major river crossing (on the Thames)
-- Cambridge -- a town at a bridge over the Cam river
-- Stamford -- you get the idea
-- Downton Abbey (fictional) -- a former abbey, no doubt destroyed by Henry VIII, near a village (ton) a Down (heathland)

From Washington State:
-- Friday Harbor -- a port town named after a native Hawaiian sailor who settled there,  Either his name was translated from Hawaiian, or more likely he was nicknamed Friday, after the character in Robin Crusoe (published a century before he was born)
-- Useless Bay -- a bay that's too shallow and exposed to the wind to be a good roadstead
-- Deception Pass -- an inlet between rocky islands that's dangerous because of the swift currents
-- Port Townsend -- a town at the end of a peninsula (actually named after a person)
-- Startup -- a town on the road leading up to a mountain pass
-- Index -- a town on the same road, near Mount Index, a mountain that looks like an index finger stuck up


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## Hand of Evil

Something to check out, the *Atlas of True Names*:  

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/06/21/atlas-true-names-charts-original-town-names/


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## Derren

Hand of Evil said:


> I would add; *Reason for Being*.  Why is the village there?  What is the chief means of income for the village?  This can be things like the only river crossing, logging, mining, support for a fort, cross road, farming, live stock, shrine, location of an event, etc.




Agreed, even if the reason is pretty mundane like "there is (good?) farmland here".


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## Challenger RPG

@_*Johnny3D3D*_ : Ha ha, looks great! I know adventure ideas can be a bit tricky to come up with, especially when writing up villages. I think a few vague ideas is just what you're looking for.

  @_*delericho*_ : I think that's a fine idea. I guess, dealing with fantasy, I tend to come up with names first and purpose afterwards, but that's not really how it is in the real world. I guess it's just a liberty I take 'because I can'. I'm sure your way would make more sense.

  @_*Hand of Evil*_ : Excellent idea. I think it would be a good idea for anyone to add this step when designing a village. It would definitely add a ton of realism to what you're creating and give you even more ideas to go with. I'd also point out that this could be something really crazy or imaginative from fantasy like: "Because all single women over 22 were cursed to live here in the 12th age" etc.

Thanks for the link, too.

  @_*Morrus*_ : Yes, thanks. I really enjoy creating name generators myself (for various things) but I guess I was always too greedy/lazy to share them. I still have a dozen or so sitting around my hard drives and papers somewhere. Thanks for sharing!

  @_*Jhaelen*_ : Yes. What can I say, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. 

  @_*Dwimmerlied*_ : Thanks. You're most welcome.

  @_*haakon1*_ : Very cool. Thanks. Kind of makes me wish I lived in England.

  @_*Derren*_ : Yep. 

***

Regrettably, this will be my last column here on En World. 

I would like to thank Mr. Morrus for giving me the opportunity to write for his fine website, and I'd like to thank all the great people who are my fellow columnists for being so supportive and writing their own great material. I've had a some chuckles reading a few of your pieces.

Thank you to everyone who read one or more of my columns. I really appreciate your time, and thank you for spending it with some of my writing. There are few things in life I enjoy more. Also, special thanks to anyone who commented. Good or bad, the feedback has been great. I've learned a few things and laughed pretty hard as well.

While I'd like to continue writing these articles (they're great fun) reasons of time and business have interfered. At present, I'm unable to continue meeting the high standards of quality for En World while maintaining a busy schedule. I've offered my willingness to continue with a reduced offering, but I believe it fails to meet the current criteria for articles.

All the Best,

David


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## howandwhy99

When I create a village I think of who created it. In my game, villages are settlements of (usually) overland constructions [broadly meaning: dungeons] created by creatures of a certain level of intelligence or higher. 

The founders of a village typically created it for one or more reasons, based upon their alignment, if even only as a resting spot before further expected travel. 
---Who and what were these founders?
---What were their reasons for settling?
---When did this event occur?

A village is roughly a collection of people in a place the size of which is determined demographically for the term. Take away the people or the place and there is no village. Items come into play too, but all could be lost and you'd still have a village IMO. Also, remember village is only a size category for a settlement. It could be a piece of an abandoned city or a boom town that sped right threw Thorp size.
---Based on who and what the settlers were, what did they need to create a long term settlement like a village to support themselves? This might include natural materials, crafted items, plants, animals, fortifications, and activities.
---Other goals for the creation of this settlement include their reasons for doing so beyond simple survival.
---Generated forward the creation of this village from its founding to the campaign starting time taking into account all of the above not mention the rest of the campaign world you are starting with.
---Generate your map of the village as it grows and changes over time. Include people and principle locations as they are born and are destroyed.
---Track this history so Players may explore it also. This encompasses the resulting (and previous) key locations as mentioned in the article above as well as Named NPCs, other monsters (like farmers  ),  treasure, NPC knowledge, monster goals and learned proficiencies. (These latter two projected forward into adventure scenarios will make up most of your adventure hooks and timeline.)
---Name everything on the map in your key and include the map on your larger starting campaign/world map.

Lastly, if the village doesn't need to last until the campaign starting time (all the people are gone for whatever reason), it then becomes a ruin possibly inhabited by monsters who will repurpose whatever is left behind depending upon those monsters. Unless the construction materials degrade very quickly it almost assuredly will still be relevant to your campaign world as a more traditional dungeon or a reclaimed city by other city builders.

And, of course, outside populations, new people, environmental catastrophes, disease, and so on over time will usually shift and change the behavior and design of a village, so be sure that when you are generating it you are doing along with the rest of the starting campaign world.


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## Challenger RPG

@_*howandwhy99*_ : Holy cow, that's awesome. Kind of makes me want to try out your campaign sometime. The creation of a new campaign for me is usually something along the lines of: "Okay guys, this world is called Korg, try not to powergame too much".

I really like the depth you get into when thinking about the founders of the village. I'm sure that would give a new GM plenty of material to work with and a ton of food for thought. Also, I arbitrarily chose 'village' for the name of the article. Really, you can use the information for cities, towns, or whichever.

I just like the word 'village' because it brings to mind the bulk of the locations in the campaigns from my early days as a gamer. It always seemed like there was another clone 'village' over the next hill and finding (or creating) a unique one is pretty cool.

Thanks for the great strategies. I use some already, but trying the others out would be pretty neat.


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## howandwhy99

In OD&D the literal Keep found in the Borderlands is the Lawful dungeon. You could run Chaos PCs through it starting them at the Caves of Chaos as their home base (lair). The game is balanced in part because the two opposing forces are balanced at campaign start. There are equal forces on the map, though both are outsized by the neutrals.  Think of the caves as a collection levels in a 1st-4th level dungeon. Then travel through the wilderness map to the civilized areas and find 1st-4th level "dungeon levels" of Thorps, Villages, and the Keep.

For me, the majority of the game is the players engaging with the game board behind the screen. The maps and tracked items are there so the players can game the situation. If I was improvising everything, this wouldn't be possible. Most people still do track position, conditions, and other stuff for combat, but it's limited Encounters. Consequences tend not to carry over except by GM fiat. So Players track their equipment and take notes about their adventures just as I track everything behind the screen. Of course, I begin with the whole map (which grows throughout the campaign), so it's not difficult as it appears during running the game. 

All of the stuff I wrote previously is just as valid for creating a standard monster dungeon too. It's simply Chaos aligned creatures aren't builders. They prefer to steal, pillage, use up, or just flat out destroy. So you typically find them in natural caves, abandoned ruins, conquered cities, and similar kinds of places. You don't need a lot of NPC classes for them IOW


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## Challenger RPG

Ha ha, I've played that adventure a few times and never realized that. You learn something new every day. 

I guess I always had it in the back of my mind that the lawful stats were there in case the players went completely AWOL, but I never considered that you could actually run it as a balanced fight with the PCs starting off in the Caves of Chaos.

That said, most of my players over the years have played good characters by alignment and whatever the heck they wanted by action. Several times I've had 'good' characters attacking lawful villages and castles for strange reasons.

I really like your way of keeping track of everything on a map 'behind the screen'. I think this would actually make for a far different style of game than I usually run and it'd definitely be worth trying out. I know a few GMs who use a similar system, but I don't know if any are quite as organized or proficient at it as you.

Also, I've made a few attempts over the years to get the players to keep track of their equipment, but they tend to just conveniently forget things like encumbrance or the usage of expendable items like potions or arrows. I don't think they're trying to be nasty, it's just not a priority. 

Chaos aligned creatures aren't builders? Ah well, so much for all those evil castles and floating citadels I had planned. Seriously though, that's a good point. How most Chaotic creatures are laid out it would make sense that they take over abandoned areas (or live in dungeons) rather than building their own structures. Otherwise you would have all these Kobold villages and Orc cities lying around.

Ha ha, yeah, I would probably work great for building dungeons, too. Thanks.

I know I'm not in the majority, but I tend to improvise a lot of my games nowadays. I used to keep really good track of maps, NPCs, equipment, spells, campaign notes, and sometimes positions of miniatures.

Nowadays I tend to bring a blank piece of paper to the table and say, "You guys ready for adventure?" and then whip up some kind of quest on the spot. Also, when I get on a good roll I can tend to memorize everyone's conditions and so forth between encounters and adventures.

As for consequences, there are so many of them in some adventures I've run...ditto on the GM Fiat, although not necessarily at the same time. 

I've probably set new records with GM Fiat by wholly creating my own RPG system and then running a game of it with no prep-work resulting in a totally Fiat-ed experience. Heck, I've even broken rules in my own game system on occasion. I'm worse as a player, of course. I either totally abuse the rules of the system (I had a game-breaking 4e character, a game-breaking 3e character, etc.), or I ignore all the rules and do whatever I want which tends to annoy the GM.


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## Mishihari Lord

Very nice article.  A step I would add is "who visits?"  Is it just the occasional peddler and bard?  Does the main road to a mine go through town?  Do produce wagons or river barges pass?  How about troops?  This will say a lot about hwom the PCs might encounter and what kind of activities go on.

If you want an adventure-village, there are a couple of formal methods that are worth swiping.  Dogs in the Vineyard is one, and Dread character generation could be modified to work as well.


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## howandwhy99

Challenger RPG said:


> Also, I've made a few attempts over the years to get the players to keep track of their equipment, but they tend to just conveniently forget things like encumbrance or the usage of expendable items like potions or arrows. I don't think they're trying to be nasty, it's just not a priority.



You want to keep it simple. It used to be that was all the players need to track on their sheets as well as knowing a handful of stats. Now there are dozens (hundreds?) of game powers that get the focus and make everything else seem like a bother instead of the point. 

As a DM you would track that stuff even though the players do too. They don't have to. Not doing so is a game strategy for them, though a poor one if they have hopes of accomplishing many goals. (Imagine not bothering to know how many HP you have).  As DM, it would be your list which needs to be as accurate as possible, not the players'. But they should tell you if they traded items with each other when your attention was elsewhere. 

In the end, running the game shouldn't be that hard. It should start small and slowly and incrementally get bigger through each session. It may look like a lot of work after 100 sessions, but break up by 100 and running a whole campaign setting is vastly more feasible.



> I know I'm not in the majority, but I tend to improvise a lot of my games nowadays. I used to keep really good track of maps, NPCs, equipment, spells, campaign notes, and sometimes positions of miniatures.



I would say improvising everything and tracking nothing is pretty much where the majority is headed now. Most people I talk to don't have any idea why people tracked things early in the game ...or why players actually _wanted_ to do so too.



> As for consequences, there are so many of them in some adventures I've run...ditto on the GM Fiat, although not necessarily at the same time.



Yeah, and that's really why I prepare the maps and lists of items, NPCs, and everything as a scenario beforehand. I'd get completely lost tracking that stuff with nothing behind the screen. But I feel I'm enabling players to engage in game play, as how poker players play when calculating the odds, or Bridge players, or eurogame boardgamers, or Magic the Gathering fanatics, and so on. It's to enable strategy. The massively interconnected web of experiences is a happy accident.

Plus, there is nothing wrong with GM fiat. But you probably want a game where the rules specifically state that is what will go on. Or, you could simply tell the players as a kind of house rule that's what you are doing. I've had players totally stunned that I tracked their characters (and everything else) behind the screen. Without being able to see the maps or what I'm tracking exactly it's kind of mind blowing for them. ...but in a totally awesome way. Of course, I've seen people totally turned off by early D&D too saying "it's not a role playing game" and had nothing to do with acting. But I've had other players who went red hot like they'd never been in a game before where everything they did had traction under their feet.


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## dd.stevenson

I prefer this method for throwing together a village. 

I use kanji instead of roman letters, because they have nuanced meanings and are therefore great idea generators.

I also use my iPad to do all the heavy lifting, so the raw output looks a little like this. This town was made using the sunshine kanji (陽) as an inspiration for road layout, and, after it is cleaned up, will be a village built up around an old temple to Pelor.

View attachment 59221


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## Challenger RPG

@_*Mishihari Lord*_ : Thanks. I think that's a good idea. If brigands constantly wander through the town it's a lot different that soldiers marching through all the time. Also, it would give some indication of what modes of transport are available (boats, carriages, etc.).

  @_*howandwhy99*_ : Ha ha, yes, that's probably true. Breaking things up is definitely doable. I've also seen some GMs who waste a lot of time with minor details when they could be interacting with the players. Use correctly, I know what you mean, and it could be really effective for a great game.

If the GM was keeping track, I'm sure it would be highly effective in getting players to start keeping track of basic supplies like torches and arrows. I might just have to try that out sometime. Usually I just ask "Did you bring torches?" and the players all look kind of miffed and say, "No." It's pretty funny, actually.

I guess I should say that "I do" run games where I plan almost everything out beforehand. All of my best adventures I tend to do a heck of a lot of prep work. Maps, NPCs, strategies, locations, treasures, room descriptions, etc. It's a style of game I really enjoy and the players like the challenge of going up against something static and well-planned.

I've even been known to write down all the characters names and vital statistics on occasion.

Other times, I just wing everything and have fun anyway. I think it's just part of my life getting more busy. For big games, I still tend to do a lot of planning and prep work. I think I just intrinsically sense that it makes the game that much better and more polished. If you put more work and thought in, the game tends to run that much smoother.

I haven't truly tracked my players all that well for a while. I used to do it a lot more, but nowadays I'm just as liable to say something like, "You want all basic equipment, okay, you've got it, mark off 20 gold."

For the record, some of the absolute best adventures I've ever played were original D&D. I still think it's classic and awesome. The simplicity and power are great. I even think a few of the elements in the rules work better than the modern RPGs out there. 

While I've powergamed a number of 'newer' characters, I don't recall ever having a truly game-breaking 1e character. I think it probably had to do with the fact that I spent most of my time 1st level and never got anywhere near high level enough to be truly powerful.

Your character also tended to be a lot weaker so you had to play that much better as a player. Even Fighters couldn't be kill-maniacs if they intended to live that long. One chance sword blow could kill just about any 1st level character. 

Even as far as 3rd and 4th edition, I was still running basic D&D games, and one of them is still one of my favorites. There must have been about ten characters and only 1 survived the adventure and he lost an arm. That adventure was so fun, everyone still recalls it fondly. That sort of thing just doesn't seem to happen that much anymore. Not saying I'm over-fond of wiping out parties, but how it happened, everyone thought it was pretty hilarious and the one guy who survived was tickled pink.

  @_*dd.stevenson*_ : Cool, thanks for sharing the links! That's pretty neat. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before.


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## haakon1

howandwhy99 said:


> Lastly, if the village doesn't need to last until the campaign starting time (all the people are gone for whatever reason), it then becomes a ruin possibly inhabited by monsters who will repurpose whatever is left behind depending upon those monsters. Unless the construction materials degrade very quickly it almost assuredly will still be relevant to your campaign world as a more traditional dungeon or a reclaimed city by other city builders.




That's very cool, and covers a lot of real history.

Another interesting possibility is for the peasants to remain in place for a long time, as conquerors come and go.   Think of England under Britons, then Romans, then Anglo-Saxon, then Danes, then Normans -- yet the peasants are mostly the same people as existed there before the Romans.  You can say the same for China under Mongol emperors, Manchu emperors, European imperialists, Japanese imperialists, etc.

The migration of a new ruling class doesn't necessarily mean the base population/culture is totally replaced with new people -- except in situations like the Americas where new diseases came with the conquerors, I think the "meet the new boss" scenario is historically much more common.

Which has me imagining an orcish or hobgoblin empire with human peasants remaining . . .


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## haakon1

Mishihari Lord said:


> A step I would add is "who visits?"




Good idea.


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