We've seen how I've been using the Spectacular Settlements book to create a town (Windemere and Fort Covenant). While I love building these things, they are a lot like using High Guard to build starships in Traveller: how much of what is built is actually used?
While I've heard the quote that ships are just "boxes to get from one planet to another", I grew up with Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica - those ships were more than just boxes. They were effectively characters in their own right. Which is something I've also heard about ships in SF games.
Same for various settlements that are going to be more than just a one-night layover. I've built up these places, with maps, characters and even rumors and things. Yet I never really seem to use them in the way I want to use them. At least that is how it feels to me.
So what do I do: buy more books on city building! Good thing it really is something I enjoy doing and is my entertainment. Similar to building worlds and ships for Traveller, building settlements for fantasy games is equally enjoyable.
I've got the final PDF for the Organic Towns, which I am hoping will help me to make the towns live. They do become characters with a changing character sheet and changes. I've yet to read much of it - I really prefer actual books for my initial read, then I use the PDF when I am at the computer alongside the book. And then I also realized I backed another town book, Campaign Towns (and at the limited-edition pledge just to see what a very expensive book will look like). The core of Organic Towns seems to be a point system, similar to Traveller's resource units per planet which in some versions of Traveller allow you to build up a planet. I never got into that level of playing as we played a lot more feet on the ground. Which is my preference for gaming in general: I don't want to be in charge of anything in real life or the gaming world! Because with power comes responsibility, and I also do not deal well with stress.
Anyway - back to world building for fantasy worlds. To quote from the PDF:
Settlement Points (SPs) are the foundation of Organic Towns. Settlement points are a representation of laborers, raw materials, and gold. To determine a settlement’s baseline monthly Settlement Point allowance, divide the population by 10 and round up to the nearest whole number. For instance, a small village with 257 residents would get 26 SPs each month. Settlement Points reset each month, and unspent Settlement Points do not carry over to next month.Settlement Points can be spent to construct buildings or take Settlement Actions.
Basically, I get to play mayor or ruler of that city. Each month I do things. Going back to Windemere, the town I've developed the most (and the players quit playing before they got there! Not sure what that says about me, but young teenagers don't always want to play with old people! At least their dad is still playing with me). Wait, I've digressed. Back to Windemere: it has a population of, well, I never said. And in re-reading older posts, turns out it is actually named Windemere Crossing. My players do make fun of me as I rarely get the names right. Part of that is that we are playing on Skype so I am missing a lot of visual cues: we do voice only as no-one wants to do video. Which I think is a mistake, but it is what it is. With 70+ buildings, and several outlying locations and smaller sub-settlements, going with a permanent population of 350 or so. There is a transient population as well from being on the caravan route. Which yes, I did add random tables to as well, I think. I really need to re-read the actual document I was generating back when I thought we'd be using this. I think I just like making documents. One of these days I may do something with them!
Organic Towns brings in a few more attributes to our settlements: moral (how the town's general mood is), affects a few things. Random rolls, specific buildings, and a few other things can affect the town mood. Hopefully Windemere Crossing won't spiral into despair!
We also have resources, which is a bit more abstracted in Settlements, which can also affect moral. Windemere Crossing, while near a desert, is also at the foothills of mountains, so while it does not get the rain from the south, there are rivers and wells readily available. Windemere Crossing is not lacking in local resources, and being on a major trade route, has access to remote resources as well.
With our local population of 350, we have 35 settlement points. With which we can build things and all that. Or upgrade existing buildings. In looking at the book, it is almost a Catan-like (or an 4X board game) experience but bundled into role-playing. There is even a SP (Settlement Points) conversion to gold pieces for a few games. Shades of Traveller: converting between an abstract resource concept to actual credits or gold: never a good idea in my opinion (some things are just too abstract to convert. Then you have the whole debacle of Star Wars introducing midochlorians...just leave some things to the imagination so we can fill them how we want!)
There are upgrade paths. For instance, from a trail to a dirt road to a cobblestone road requires SP, resources and all that. And of course, these also require SP to maintain, but can bring about trade bonuses and other benefits.
Sorry, distracted again. I'll try and do a better overview of the book when it shows up. I may take the Settlements work sheets, and add aspects of Organic Towns (and then add more elements from the other City Building book). What would be interesting is seeing about tracking the towns as the players stay there. Building improvements will have construction going on, work crews, possibly artisans depending on the building. Reminds me of the Blue Ridge Parkway, near where I live. The bridges were made by Italian stone masons, and all are very pretty. Things like that ("Yes, we hired the master Dwarf mason Thunderrock to build the bridge into town") has potential impact to how the players perceive the town.
And again - all this goes on in my head and rarely seems to see the light of game play. Think I need to write things down ahead of time: the couple times I did that in the Cowboy game I did manage to cover at least some of the things I wanted to cover.
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