Greetings!

I usually draw up a simple map, showing most of the commercial and public buildings, and most of the inhabitant's houses. Then I create the village history, common and unusual resources, and the dominant culture. Then the dominant and secondary religions, as well as any locally organized cults. From there, I fill in the primary trade resources as well as trade and crafting specialties. Then, it is fairly easy to determine a good number of prominent, wealthy families--serving as the elite, and the power-brokers of the society. Selecting or determining a leader, of whatever kind, is then also an easy exercise. Then, I create about a dozen or so prominent people--blacksmiths, carpenters, a few priests, a General Goods Merchant, a Miller, some boatmen, a few Tavern Keepers, a Leatherworker, a Rope Merchant, and a few other particular merchants and tradesmen. Then I use some random tables to quickly generate about two dozen farmers, local tribal members, hunters, fishermen, some milk girls, shepherds, a few adolescents, and some village elders.

After determining these details, many aspects of the history, the local culture, religions, and economy, all combine to easily form natural power-centers, traditions, and strong factions amongst the community. Any tension points or areas of conflict typically reveal themselves as well, should any exist. After all, many villages are very strong and united, and may not have any kind of rebels or schisms, let alone any kind of counter-culture.

I have this system down, where literally dozens of villages can be generated rather quickly, and a kind of geographical and cultural quilt develops. From such a foundation, it is an easy matter to select a particular village, and add additional bizarre details or weird features. I also review any such village, and as appropriate, assign various magical features, or other strange aspects going on in the local area.

How do you build and detail villages in your campaigns?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I have a hard time picturing unwalled villages in most fantasy settings because they would be too vulnerable to monsters (of various types). For the same reason, I have a hard time envisioning large numbers of true non-combatants. At the very least, any able-bodied individual should have militia training.

If I want to do it with a map, I start there.

d4+1 main cross roads running east to west
d4+1 main cross roads running north to south
d8+4 squares (~20 ft) length for each segment of road.
This will first be drawn as a draft, once I have an idea of exactly how all the roads intersect, I adjust the map to make the roads as straight as possible.

For each square adjacent to the road, there's a 50/50 chance it is occupied by a building. Sometimes an additional road will seem likely based on a pattern of absence of buildings. Once all roads and buildings are drawn, I fill in surrounding terrain.

Estimated population is roughly 4 occupants per building.

I keep Richard Cantillon's Essai and Gary Gygax's World Builder on hand.

It's extremely helpful to have at least basic working knowledge of Cantillon. I turn to World Builder to get an estimate as far as acreage of farmland and what sorts of farms and some demographic breakdown.

From there, I note the locations of important shops and NPCs, generate stats for important NPCs. Determine inventory for important shops (villages aren't going to have everything you'll want). At a minimum, to be functional for RPG purposes, there will have to be a church, a general store, and a trader.

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 24, 2022, 01:05:41 AM
I adjust the map to make the roads as straight as possible.

Now we see the fantasy element. IRL, many roads were not as straight as possible.

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 24, 2022, 01:11:15 AM
Now we see the fantasy element. IRL, many roads were not as straight as possible.

We both know you didn't actually go through the method I outlined a few times to see what kind of roads that it produces to understand that they need straightening out to look more like real roads. There wasn't enough time elapsed between my post and yours for that to be possible.

And what does "many roads were not as straight as possible" even mean? How many roads are there in the world? Millions? You could say "many roads were" and fill in the blank with just about anything and make a statement that is technically correct but utterly useless.

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 24, 2022, 01:37:55 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on July 24, 2022, 01:11:15 AM
Now we see the fantasy element. IRL, many roads were not as straight as possible.

We both know you didn't actually go through the method I outlined a few times to see what kind of roads that it produces to understand that they need straightening out to look more like real roads. There wasn't enough time elapsed between my post and yours for that to be possible.

And what does "many roads were not as straight as possible" even mean? How many roads are there in the world? Millions? You could say "many roads were" and fill in the blank with just about anything and make a statement that is technically correct but utterly useless.

You didn't give us enough information to understand how you were getting straight or non-straight roads, just a number of roads and their lengths. It's impossible to go through the method you outlined without assuming a bunch of other steps, like, "where does one place the roads"? So "roads as straight as possible" was simultaneously un-understandable, and a statement that sounds like you're making a strong assumption about what your settlement is like.

I prefer a macro-worldbuilding approach.
I decide what the general politics, religion, sensibilities, etc. are over a wide geographic region (like a whole country, kingdom, whatever), and assume that everyone within the region follows those general strictures. Variations and outliers exist as I need them for the story. I rarely plot out cities and villages to such excruciating detail. I don't need to know exactly how many tanners a village has, and I need their stats even less. If for whatever reason it becomes important, I just make something up. I also just assume that most towns and villages have basic stuff, like a blacksmith or two, a dry goods store, farms, tailor, carpenter, etc. The only time there'd be an exception is if it's tied to an adventure (i.e. the blacksmith got kidnapped by goblins and is being forced to craft swords for them).

I also don't map out every village or town. Most of the time it's not important to know how far one building is from another. If for whatever reason it becomes important, it's d20 minutes away. Or maybe d100 for larger cities.

I used to love drawing maps and stuff when I was younger, but most of the time the effort I put in was wasted. I'd much rather put that time and energy into the story and adventures, then simply abstract things like village layouts.

Quote from: Naburimannu on July 24, 2022, 04:15:48 AM
You didn't give us enough information to understand how you were getting straight or non-straight roads,

If it is true that there isn't enough information, people shouldn't be asserting what it is since it would require assuming facts not in evidence.
Similarly, f you haven't understood it, you shouldn't be asserting information is lacking in the first place since you lack the understanding to make that call.
If there are sincere questions, why aren't questions being asked? Why is the default position to spew out uninformed opinions and being as negative as possible?

Quotejust a number of roads and their lengths. It's impossible to go through the method you outlined without assuming a bunch of other steps, like, "where does one place the roads"?

I never gave road lengths. I gave the lengths of road segments. You can ultimately derive the road lengths from that. But because I gave the length of segments and not roads, it does tell you exactly where along each road that two roads intersect.

QuoteSo "roads as straight as possible" was simultaneously un-understandable, and a statement that sounds like you're making a strong assumption about what your settlement is like.

Because you haven't even tried to actually do it. The meaning is obvious when you actually do go through the steps. Had you done that, you would have never confused the length of segments for the length of roads. Had you done it, you would understood that it is telling you where the intersections are. Had you done it, you would realize that other than a rare, convenient, lucky set of rolls, it's not possible to keep the roads straight. If you paid attention to the scale, as you would if you were actually attempting to draw the map, you would realize how insane some of the meandering randomness produces relative to the road lengths and then it would be perfectly clear why you would need to shift and play around with the exact positioning of the roads to straighten them out a little.

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 24, 2022, 03:42:29 PM
Because you haven't even tried to actually do it. The meaning is obvious when you actually do go through the steps. Had you done that, you would have never confused the length of segments for the length of roads. Had you done it, you would understood that it is telling you where the intersections are. Had you done it, you would realize that other than a rare, convenient, lucky set of rolls, it's not possible to keep the roads straight. If you paid attention to the scale, as you would if you were actually attempting to draw the map, you would realize how insane some of the meandering randomness produces relative to the road lengths and then it would be perfectly clear why you would need to shift and play around with the exact positioning of the roads to straighten them out a little.

Quote
If I want to do it with a map, I start there.

d4+1 main cross roads running east to west
d4+1 main cross roads running north to south
d8+4 squares (~20 ft) length for each segment of road.
This will first be drawn as a draft, once I have an idea of exactly how all the roads intersect, I adjust the map to make the roads as straight as possible.

For each square adjacent to the road, there's a 50/50 chance it is occupied by a building. Sometimes an additional road will seem likely based on a pattern of absence of buildings. Once all roads and buildings are drawn, I fill in surrounding terrain.

Sorry, no, the meaning is not obvious. It's pretty clear you have a procedure in mind, but I can't read your mind to determine what it is. And yes, I have stared at your words with paper and pen in hand, but NONE OF THE THINGS are as obvious as you assert.

I have a blank piece of (quad-ruled) paper. There are roads that cross something. They cross each other? But how far apart are they spaced?

Quote
I never gave road lengths. I gave the lengths of road segments. You can ultimately derive the road lengths from that. But because I gave the length of segments and not roads, it does tell you exactly where along each road that two roads intersect.

You gave the length of roads measured in 20' segments. But that tells us nothing about where roads intersect. All you can say is "I have a collection of line segments of lengths 5, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11. Three are oriented east-west, three north-south."

In my exasperation I'm beginning to suspect that you might be assuming that the village is at a four-way crossroads. You never stated that.
But if that's the case, and one starts at the middle and works outwards determining the location of buildings, and assumes that any square that doesn't have a building has a road in it, and has some sort of rule of thumb for the order in which you're considering squares, then that's almost a complete description - although if it's based on squares it doesn't allow for roads meeting at non-right angles, so your point about straight roads still doesn't make any sense. Nope, your instructions leave me completely at a loss. This is an underspecified procedure.

Also, I'm not sure what kind of urban plan you're trying to produce for your settlements, but square straight roads doesn't meet my expectations of verisimilitude, which is part of why I was questioning things and trying to figure out what you meant. A good example of the sort of thing I might go for is  https://www.alamy.com/plan-of-shrewsbury-lord-burghleys-atlas-london-1579-source-royal-18-d-iii-ff89v-90-language-english-author-saxton-christopher-image227208125.html, which has plenty of curves and forks. And that's a good-sized town, not a village. "Medieval Rural Settlement: Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1600" seems like a reasonable source for a generic campaign world, and the *only* rectilinear plan I see in there is Flint, in North Wales, which was - much like a Roman legion fort - something built by a central authority as part of an invasion, not something that evolved out of people settling in an area. The authors immediately make the point that Flint was unusual, that most of the other "new towns" created as part of the pacification of Gwynedd weren't on a strict rectilinear plan.

Greetings!

Geesus. Place roads within villages however you want.

In my Thandor campaign, most villages have relatively small roads layed out in a kind of haphazard and crazy way. People make roads going off in whatever direction. In strong, powerful empires and kingdoms, road style and construction may be and usually is, stylized and layed out to spec by standard regulations.

I like being detailed in the creation of villages, though I also appreciate what Effette was commenting on, about being swift, abstract, and even minimalist. I sometimes do that as well, depending on the group, the scenario, and so on.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Naburimannu on July 24, 2022, 04:02:06 PM

Quote
If I want to do it with a map, I start there.

d4+1 main cross roads running east to west
d4+1 main cross roads running north to south
d8+4 squares (~20 ft) length for each segment of road.
This will first be drawn as a draft, once I have an idea of exactly how all the roads intersect, I adjust the map to make the roads as straight as possible.

For each square adjacent to the road, there's a 50/50 chance it is occupied by a building. Sometimes an additional road will seem likely based on a pattern of absence of buildings. Once all roads and buildings are drawn, I fill in surrounding terrain.

And on, oh, a sixth rereading, I think I get it: you mean segment in a fairly strict elementary school geometry sense: the length of a side of a block, so the length of a road is the sum of a sequence of segments. Yes, if you have roll d8+4 for each block side length, without trying to do anything to make them correlated, the roads are going to be very non-straight.

OK, that makes sense. Your base case is still underspecified but I can use this algorithm to sort-of make a map. You're assuming four-way intersections, I guess?


Where I'm coming from: I have in the past been paid to write computer code to generate imaginary urban road networks for my job, so this is a thing I take a little bit seriously. Perhaps too seriously, per SHARK.

Quote from: Effete on July 24, 2022, 06:03:57 AM
I prefer a macro-worldbuilding approach.
I decide what the general politics, religion, sensibilities, etc. are over a wide geographic region (like a whole country, kingdom, whatever), and assume that everyone within the region follows those general strictures. Variations and outliers exist as I need them for the story. I rarely plot out cities and villages to such excruciating detail. I don't need to know exactly how many tanners a village has, and I need their stats even less. If for whatever reason it becomes important, I just make something up. I also just assume that most towns and villages have basic stuff, like a blacksmith or two, a dry goods store, farms, tailor, carpenter, etc. The only time there'd be an exception is if it's tied to an adventure (i.e. the blacksmith got kidnapped by goblins and is being forced to craft swords for them).

I also don't map out every village or town. Most of the time it's not important to know how far one building is from another. If for whatever reason it becomes important, it's d20 minutes away. Or maybe d100 for larger cities.

I used to love drawing maps and stuff when I was younger, but most of the time the effort I put in was wasted. I'd much rather put that time and energy into the story and adventures, then simply abstract things like village layouts.

This tends to be more my usual approach. If I need stats for NPCs I usually make them up on the fly, unless I want to do something specific for them, on which case I may have more details before hand. But generally I tend to assume average attributes/ability scores by default (10 in 3e+ D&D), low scores (6-8) in one or two areas if relevant, high scores (14-16) in the attribute tied to the NPC's field of specialty, and above average scores (12-14) in secondary areas related to their specialty. If it's an exceptionally talented NPC I just boost their relevant scores and maybe their Intelligence and/or Charisma a bit more (typically in 2 point increments in D&D). If I wanna make them extra hardy I boost their Constitution instead.

SHARK's approach makes me feel inadequate with that level of detail! LOL

Though, I do admire that degree of attention and think it can sometimes bring something extra to the game, since it provides greater visibility to what's actually available, and you can always fall back on your extensive notes if players get picky or ask too many questions. The downside is when players ignore it and head right into the adventure, the effort becomes somewhat wasted, unless you're going to publish it at least in a blog somewhere.

Quote from: VisionStorm on July 24, 2022, 06:40:36 PM
Though, I do admire that degree of attention and think it can sometimes bring something extra to the game, since it provides greater visibility to what's actually available, and you can always fall back on your extensive notes if players get picky or ask too many questions. The downside is when players ignore it and head right into the adventure, the effort becomes somewhat wasted, unless you're going to publish it at least in a blog somewhere.

Unfortunately, this has been my experience over the years/decades, and it's completely changed my approach to worldbuilding (for the better, IMO). As I mentioned, I used to map out everything, flesh out a handful of NPCs in each village/town, come with silly voices or mannerisms. The whole shebang! But while it might get a laugh here or there, or a small degree of interaction, most of it was filler and the players knew it.

Another issue I ran into was that because I was trying to create a "living world," I tried to make everyone unique. So when I had NPCs that had potential sidequests, they didn't stand out and the players ignored them, assuming they were just more filler. That, more than anything, sparked the shift, I think. Simply put: mundane NPCs are played mundane (using just my normal voice), while important NPCs need to stand out (afflections, accents, etc). It jumps at the players and says, "Hey assholes, there's something to explore here."

I'm not trying to knock being detailed and meticulous. I would love to run a successful game like that. But for whatever reason, it just didn't work for me.

There's a reprint of a Dragon magazine article in one of the Best of the Dragon compilations which has an article about businesses in a fantasy settlement. It told you which sort of business or building types should be available per X number of population in a city, town, or village. Pretty interesting.

As far as I'm concerned, abstract, macro scale is efficient, while specific details selected with care is what brings a place to life.  So after some time mapping everything out and some other time winging it, I've found I don't particularly prefer either extreme.  Instead, I put together a skeleton at the macro level and then hang some specific but incomplete details on it.  When done right, this gives me the best of both worlds.

Where I used to screw up doing this was trying to be complete.  If Jan the Stable Owner has a line of description, a line of personality, a line of motivations, etc, then everyone around him does.  No!  Moreover, Jan probably doesn't need all that.  What I finally got through my sometimes thick skull is that the level of detail you need is the level you don't improvise well, or at least to cement the idea of the area in your head.  So now I might have this:

- (in the stable section or in a list of local NPCs, it varies) Jan, coal black, long hair, gruff, 3 hands.
- (in the inn section or same list, ditto) Melda, bossy, Patrice barkeep,

Then in the notes about the elderly wheelwright that happens to be the de facto leader in this village, I might go into more detail, because the party is likely to talk to him more.

This approach isn't really all that different from  the usual thing you see, which is a map with 20-30 buildings on it, 4-6 of them called out as important, and then a list of NPC stat blocks that the writer expected to have the most interaction.  You might also have some general population numbers.  The minor difference is that I don't fill in the gaps consistently, but only for enough of a sample to get the place in my head.  It's a minor difference in approach that is a major difference in how long it takes me to do it.

It's also far more useful to me at the table when running the game, which is the whole point of the exercise, after all.  Someone else's longer write up may be useful for them, but that's a lot of detail to wade through for anyone else.  That kind of details all runs together into mush pretty darn quick.