It Takes a Village

[MedievalMan]

Whats the population? Do we want to make it a tiny speck of a community or something a bit more substantial. We would only have to detail those characters who the party would interact with or who are important personages.

We also need some sort of standard for writing characters and establishments.

Like,

Description:
Personality:
Secret:
Stats: If necessary.

Maybe something like that? No more than a paragraph for each. I also like the idea of the Gaston character.

[SmootRK]

Whats the population? Do we want to make it a tiny speck of a community or something a bit more substantial. We would only have to detail those characters who the party would interact with or who are important personages.

We also need some sort of standard for writing characters and establishments.

Like,

Description:
Personality:
Secret:
Stats: If necessary.

Maybe something like that? No more than a paragraph for each. I also like the idea of the Gaston character.

I was going to mention that I would like to see an example or two of the sort of "entries" of what you want stuff to come together as before I put too much thought into it. I work better when I can 'fill in the blanks' when possible.

[MedievalMan]

So do I. I work my best when given a template to start from that's why I am asking so I don't run off and write up a bunch of stuff I don't have to.

I can do a rough write-up of Citizen Wilkes as an example but I want to know how we want NPC's formatted and presented before I do so.

[Steveman]

If this helps find some direction, that map I drew was originally intended to be for a village of ~175-200 people, a small but important blip that served as a waystop on the trip between neighboring kingdoms. The idea, however, got scrapped as that game kinda fell through, ;_;

[MedievalMan]

200 people sounds like a nice number. Is that in the village proper or does it include the surrounding farms needed to feed such a location? I am for some off reason reminded of Winterhaven where they made it a clear point to say that the majority of the people live outside the town.

[Steveman]

That covers everyone, the townies and the various farms outside the guard posts.

[MedievalMan]

Righto.

Alright so anyone have anything they REALLY want to write themselves? Better we hash out who is doing what when now so as not to have conflicting interests later.

[Metroknight]

Is this village going to be deep inside a civilized region or out on the edge?

Different locations require different layout and different buildings. The map that was linked earlier would be a good village deep inside a civilized kingdom where most of the monsters have been killed or pacified. If the village is out on the edge of the frontier / wilderness then there needs to be a fortified section or the whole village surrounded with some type of protection from monsters and bandits.

What type of leadership / government should be used?

There could be a Lord and his men that are charged with the protection of the village and the surrounding area.
There could be a Mayor and councilmen that is chosen by the villagers or appointed by a Lord from the kingdom that the village is in.
The village could just be ran by a Council of Elders.

What ever is chosen will impact on the flavor of the setting for a long term game.

I do like the idea but what would serve my style of play better would be a random generating table of npcs. That would let me just roll up on the spot a personality rather then taking a premade map and stripping it down to nothing and rebuilding it as I usually have to do.

[MedievalMan]

How about we combine ideas? IE we make a list of say 50 "important" or "sample" NPC's that can be picked up and used on the fly while also including a large table to randomly generate everyone else. I do love random tables.

I also was thinking the village would be somewhere along the edge of civilization (as that usually makes the best adventuring locations). In which case you would be right and we would need a different map.

As for town leadership I say why don't we all just vote on it? I sort of like the idea of having a mayor or town council or maybe a combination thereof.

Thanks for the insight by the way.

[jdn2006]

Here's something that can be used for this or any other reason (inns).

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.ph ... 36639&da=y