World Building is a messy, messy place and I’ve yet to figure out how to put it in order. Where to start. Some say start with the religion, others say start with a faction or with the map. Personally, I think it’s best to start with a village and make reminders where needed to link to the other facets of world building.

This is going to handle building a village for a long-term world. For one you intend to reuse. If you’re building a town for a one-shot this’ll probably be far too much.

When we’re building a town we have to keep track of quite a few things. First the geological position. Is it a seaside town, is it a trading hub? You can sort of fill these in afterwards. For my example it’s going to be a town by a river in a temperate area. My mind travels to Spain or France. Rich fertile fields rolling in each direction for (almost) as far as the eye can see.

One of the other basics we need to establish is a rough guestimate of the population. Us humans and definitely not mimics are really poor when it comes to large numbers. What does a town of five thousand look like? A town of fifty thousand? I always struggle to imagine so I like to google towns near me to help build a feeling. In this case, my number is 7.000, same as the village I live in so I have a much easier time imagining the scale.

Alright now there’s a list of things we need to take into consideration.

• Food.
• Economy.
• Culture.
• Military / Security.
• Governance / Hierarchy.
• Diversity.
• Districts.
• Existing communities / Guilds.
• Crime.
• Schooling / Education.
• Religion.

We also need a name for our town, that part is the easiest. It’s by a river, it’s located strategically between several other towns. The bridge is called the Arc. We’ll call it Arcford. Arc for the bridge, ford because it means to cross a river without a bridge.

Food.

They’re by a river, there are plains nearby, there is a lot of rich fertile soil supplied by that river so Arcford has it good. They have meat, milk and leather from animal husbandry. They have wheat, potatoes, grapes, barley… everything that grows in their area and climate. They are self-sufficient and produce an excess.

Economy.

There are few forests nearby, the river soil isn’t great for clay around these parts, there are no stones or natural minerals nearby either but they do produce an excess of food. Their exports are thusly food, animals, cowhide, horses and the like and their imports are lumber, iron, stone and so on.

Culture.

Well this is the part we make a side-note to establish the culture of the entire region to tackle later on when we really colour in the world. But on a micro I envision the people here to be very countryside-French. La France profonde – or Deep French is a culture around our fictional village. They have a very localist outlook on life and are not too involved with the drama and stress of the nation’s capital. They have little in nobility and have a very measured and relaxed attitude. Their life revolves around good food, good conversation. They have festivals that revolve around the important stages of harvest and yearly competitions between vintners, vignerons, ranchers and farmers on who produces the best of what.

As I settle on this I feel that there might be a bit of competition or hostilities (friendly perhaps and not deadly) between the various farms and their owners.

Military / Security.

The town is a little too small to really warrant a militia, nor are they located near a border or fort. They are deep within their nations territory and there are more military fortifications to the north. They needs guards, of course. But with various ranches, farms and such it’s very likely that the small town can’t keep the peace everywhere at once. So there will be an Arcford Guard and some of the ranchers may employ their own guards to keep their cattle safe at night.

When it comes to law there are the guards and a captain of the guard who keep things in check. Arcford is relatively peaceful as far as towns go so I imagine they have a small prison / holding cell and criminals are often put to work instead of set to languish inside a prison. Murderers and other extreme forms of crime get sent to the nation’s capital which isn’t too far away.

During the harvest seasons when all the crops are pulled off the land and merchants travel to Arcford in hopes of getting the best and freshest ingredients there will be a need for increased security. But I feel the town would outsource this if possible, perhaps to adventurers or a nearby organisation as keeping all the guards on payroll would be an unneeded expense through the slow months that precede the harvest.

Governance / Hierarchy.

I decide that Arcford has a mayor, an elected position. In support he has a Captain of the Guard that handles the security details and an accountant or trade magistrate of some form. It’s an elected position but I imagine the populace to be fairly ‘laissez faire’, very easy going and if things are good they’ll happily re-elect the mayor. Because I am an infinite wellspring of creativity his name is going to be Brian Arcford, of the Arcford family. A human noble family that traces its origin back to the founding of the town.

Speaking of nobles, I doubt they’d hold too much sway in Arcford. But the farmers and ranchers however would be as close as nobility would be in a bigger city. They are the large landowners and their harvest and produce set forth the prosperity of the town.

They mayor together with his captain of the guard and the magistrate would form the judicial system. It’s not scaling but Arcford isn’t that large and it’s a relatively peaceful town.

Diversity.

In keeping with the whole sleepy-town life enjoyer atmosphere, I imagine that the town of Arcford isn’t very racist. They have a good spread of humans, elves, dwarves, races that are common in the area. But during the harvest they’ll need extra hands and are able and willing to accept orcs, goblins and the mixture of them to make sure the work gets done.

Districts.

Arcford isn’t large so this is a short bit. There’s the outskirts, the farmlands, the housing and the town centre. The outskirts are defined by lush green hills with small outcrops of trees.

The farmlands is where the ranchers and farmers live in some of the largest houses with stables, storage space as well as housing for the farmhands and people that live and work on the farms and ranches.

The residential zone has narrower streets and spans from the edge of the farm/ranch lands to the town centre with small general stores dotted around to supply the people.

The town centre is where all the merchants, the mayor, guard offices, inns, taverns and any temples or shrines will be located.

Communities and Guilds.

With all of the above in mind, we can imagine there is at least one guild. A mercantile guild, where the various ranch holders and farmers can hold one another accountable and keep the prices good is darn mandatory with all that food being produced and traded off. It’ll also allow more wholesale practices if they had a central store for their produce as well as cattle. Because the harvest is such an important point in Arcford I’ll name this guild the Cullers. Because nepotism is a thing, the mayor’s sister, Jeanne Arcford works for the Cullers in their large bulk-store, which again because I am a wellspring of creativity, I’m naming it the Farmer’s Market.

Crime.

Aaah the Unspoken Trades. Wherever people are making a profit, someone will try to steal from them or take advantage of them. Because of the location and the link with farmers this guild of cattle rustlers, thieves and ne’er-do-wells will carry the name Heartland Rats. Heartlanders among themselves and simply Rats by the townsfolk.

With a relatively low populace and none of that big-city vibe I don’t imagine they’d have any luck trying to exploit other vices in the city. Their priorities would be keeping a good thing going; making sure other organisations don’t step onto their territory and start doing their work.

Who better to lead the Heartlanders than someone in semi-public vision, always there with a smile and a drink, listening to disgruntled farmhands getting laid off and hearing about guard shifts and all sort of rumours that could help the Unspoken Trades than the local barkeep. We’ll name him Kevin Harrison, a middle aged barkeep who aside from owning a bar will secretly be the leader of the Heartlanders.

Schooling / Education.

The people in Arcford aren’t hicks, they’re well off and they have the money and taxes to support public schooling. So I imagine they have one large school where children learn how to read and are given a general education that has a slight focus on their area, farming, ranching and the like.

I’m tempted to name this the Arcford School but we have a few too many Arcfords in Arcford already so I’ll name this the Wilson Bridge School, and as a backstory we have Wilson Bridge, a mage from the capital that came to retire in Arcford and built the school and has since passed away.

Religion.

Much like culture this is another one where we can draw a line to establish a proper pantheon. Because we haven’t spent too much time on religion at all, we’ll go for something simple and say that Arcford has a temple to Brigantia. A goddess drawn from Celtic inspiration that is the patron of livestock, farming and rivers. We’ll tweak her later but note her down on the start of our pantheon document. We can add various deities later on but we’ll settle that Brigantia is the largest one in Arcford.

Painting in the details.

Alright. Now we have our town. Well. Not really, we’ve only populated it a little and currently aside from a history lesson and a description we have nothing for our players. But with all the above we can so very easily populate it. We don’t really need to spend much energy with all this groundwork done.

We know it’ll have a tavern, a large one where the head of the criminal organisation can do his thing. We know it has the Farmer’s Market. With so many people coming in around harvest time to buy and sell, the town will have at least one large inn. Any town should have a general store where people can purchase their tallow, candles and other non-perishables. Most of their food’ll come from the Farmer’s Market anyway.

They don’t have access to any mineral deposits or iron so there’ll be only one blacksmith. With iron being in low supply he’ll make horseshoes, nails, pans and perform the odd repair here and there. The same can be said for a carpenter.

With so many cattle and seasonal travel Arcford will have a stable. Somewhere merchants can store their carriages, get their horses fed but also get some repairs done on their carriage.

With so much food and the general attitude of the people I would imagine at least two or three proper restaurants.

In terms of side quests we have a flood that we can derive from the above.

• Harvest Guard: Protecting a trade-caravan as they leave from Arcford / head to Arcford. Or as extra city-guard during the harvest period.
• Harvest Festival: A collection of mini games and skill checks after the harvest has concluded.
• Catching Cattle Rustlers: As the party rests on the outskirts of the town they see shady figures running off with cows.
• Mini-events: Runaway sheep, children falling off the bridge, traders stranded along the road.
• Wilson Bridge’s Legacy: Who was the mysterious mage and why did he really come to Arcford? What happened to his magical spoils after he passed away?
• Princess: A prize winning pig is found dead in the morning. One family blames the other, but what really happened?
• Vanished Vintage: During a wine competition a priceless bottle of Arcanwine which would’ve been the prize has been stolen.
• Etc. etc.

Creating a population.

Now that we have the town fleshed out we can also easily craft NPCs or help players that want to be from Arcford in creating their character as we have simple lists of possibilities. Note that these aren’t complete, but you can very easily run your favourite character generator and add in below where applicable.

Origin:

• Born to a Rancher/Farm owner (High Class)
• Born to a merchant / guard / teacher (Middle Class)
• Born to a farmhand / ranch-hand / labourer / fisher (Low Class)

Education:

• Home-schooled
• Wilson Bridges School
  • Farming: nature and/or herbalism
  • Animal husbandry: animal handling

Religion:

• Brigantia
• Agnostic / atheistic
• (To be expanded. But we know what’d make sense.)

Early years / First jobs:

• Farming / Ranching
• Cooking
• Seasonal guard / Merchant guard
• Farmer’s Market / retail

Cheat Sheet

If the list of things to take into consideration is a little too long or hard to remember there is a very easy cheat list to follow. A peaceful, prosperous town should have near everything fulfilled in Maslow’s pyramid.

So let’s quickly run through the pyramid and square it away with Arcford from the bottom up.

There’s plenty of food, there’s a river, the climate is temperate and there’s both housing and inns.

There are guards and a system for crime and punishment.

There are several guilds, at least one place of worship, taverns and festivals for people to gather and build friendships.

There are competitions for prize winning pigs to best wine and best food and everything in between.

There’s a schooling system in place, recreation would come in the form of fishing, creativeness would blossom in the form of good food.

Strife

Now that we’ve got Arcford all set up as a lazy town full of epicureans and easy going lovers of the good life. Let’s see how we could disrupt that.

Normally if I’m building a town in strife I would never start with building a peaceful utopian version of that town but for this experiment let’s destabilise Arcford. This can come externally or internally.

Externally, food is their biggest strength, they would probably survive a poor harvest but if there is any form of incursions from outside. Rampaging gnolls, orc warbands or any such pillaging the farmlands things would swiftly go sour. Scarcity creates crime, the town isn’t set up to handle that crime and it would put an enormous amount of pressure on the mayor. A mayor who has not been tested by pressure before and would very easily snap and become erratic.

Internally the biggest point of power is the mayor as well. Now, we’ve not really went into detail in what kind of many Brian Arcford is but I imagine him to be relatively young, well spoken and a humble man. Arcford is built as a staple starter town and this would be the starting zone of an adventure, but we could very easily twist that. He has a lot of freedom and if we make him a lesser man it doesn’t seem farfetched that he could run the town into the ground and cause a lot of strife.

People’s sense of security would go down, a sense of unfairness taking the place. The town would swiftly become pro mayor or anti mayor therein the latter suffer more and the former are raised into a small-scale quasi nobility. All those tensions would come to a boil around election time, either mayor Arcford has the elections rigged or the new nobles ensure it’s in their favour after which, well… we have enough real life examples of what happens when a nation doesn’t agree with the outcome of an election.

To create large scale strife in a city or town one only needs to look at the bottom layers of the pyramid and start poking at it. Remove just one cornerstone and the whole populace starts acting up and out.

For now, we’ll keep Arcford nice and peaceful but it can be fun to consider what the actions of the party might do to destabilise it if it comes to it.

We’ve got our town. Next up we’ll be looking at Regions, Cultures and Religions and they will end up filling in the details of our towns/cities and vice versa. We already know Brigantia is going to be featured, we already have a temperate region and a culture to match it.