Making decent settlements is fricking hard
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Making decent settlements is fricking hard
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Making settlements is for chumps. Real GMs steal them.
Alright but check this out
>Alright guys this is [town name]
>Picture? Map? Don't got one of those bro
>Anyway it has this many buildings and this many people and these services
>Anyway it has this many buildings and this many people and these services
Rookie mistake. Players will invariably ask for a service that you forgot to list, it's better to just ask what they're looking for and decide.
>Players will invariably ask for a service that you forgot to list
Well it's not fricking there, is it? You're in a small town in the ass-end of the country.
> Player asks about the local brothel, with a shit eating, bard playing grin
> "Sorry, no brothels here. We're honest and simple folk. Perhaps you should be attending the church at this time though."
And then the players are crucified as sinners by nightfall.
>implying churches didn’t promote municipal prostibulum publicum to protect the virtue of “decent” women
trad-right morons idealize an invented fairy-tale version of the past with anachronistic “values” created by political propagandists in the last two or three generations
settle down troony. deep breaths
continue to dilate, sinner
>you know, I didn't want to mention this before, but I've been checking these lists of services and the last 20 towns we've been to have had NO washerwoman
this is why theatre of the mind is based beyond belief
Can someone post me some good quality settlement maps?
https://watabou.github.io/village.html
And why do you need to flesh it out if the adventure doesn't take place in the settlement anyway?
Literally just look up the medieval plan of any european hamlet, village, town or city. Many havent even changed much in basic layout.
>I'm jealous
I didn't fricking make it, are you joking me?
I can barely draw a stick figure.
Anyway, how'd you make yours, it's nice.
The only 'decent' settlement is the one believed by the players.
>Inkarnate.
besides Inkarnate what other really good map makers are there? Preferably free.
pleased with how this turned out. sorry for the small resolution image, I had to tighten it down for filesize reasons. campaign cartographer 3. It seems capable of a lot - and some of the things people do with it are downright amazing - but I don't know how half of it works yet.
very nice, but a bit thic with trees. medieval people tended to deforest their surroundings pretty quickly
only stupid people deforest their surroundings. forest conservation was already well-established practice in many places by the medieval era
Allow me to introduce you to this country called "Britain"
Can't build ships to conquer the world without wood. Can't get wood without chopping down a few trees.
The British deforestation happened way back when it was but a pimple on Europe's arse. You know the English moorlands? Those used to be forests back in the olden times.
Consider that anon's first point, that only stupid people deforest their surroundings
That is why the previous anon specified "people."
> Five separate bridges
Dude those take time and effort to make and maintain. Generally you want to build as few bridges as possible. Every house in that village could be accessible with only three bridges.
Talk to the bridgebuilder guild. All these bridges are infrastructurally important and not built to scam the king outta cash
I will certainly have to! Judging from meandering river scattered with islands the village is clearly built on a floodplain and all those bridges are build very low to the water, saving expense I imagine. Next rainy season they are going to suffer severe damage that I expect this guild will be all to happy to repair, for a handsome cost.
Yes I imagine I will go talk to them, and bring some of the kingsmen for the pleasure.
>out-of-universe honest mistake is explained with in-universe dishonest actions
This always brings a smile to my face.
>thinking p=np is real
This isn't even p=np. Frick this shit isn't even four color theorem. It's REALLY fricking easy that a twelve year old with a pencil can solve it.
B = L - 1
Where B is number of required bridges and L is total number of distinct land areas.
Inns weren't real either.
Once you start picking at the nits, the whole thing unravels.
Anyone who took high school Latin and read Ecce Romani can tell you that inns date back at least to Roman times.
Raeda in fossa immobilis manebat.
>can't figure out what the difference between the Roman Empire and medieval Europe is
jesus, didn't stay in high school, did you?
Most travelers in the majority of European history stayed with other people of their economic class in their homes. The Church supported travel for pilgrimage, so you could typically get compensated for the food you provided to a traveler if you were a serf.
Then, during the crusades the more formalized hospital network (you took high school latin so you should know the roots of the word) was established to allow pilgrims to reach the holy land more easily. A hospital was a place you stayed if you couldn't find lodging for whatever reason. One of the primary reasons travelers couldn't find lodging? They were sick. So hospitals became places where sick people gathered, eventually becoming what we know them as today.
Inns were eventually established along highly trafficked routes -- some of the earliest were in England (ca. 1200 CE) due to the basically linear pilgrimage trail through the isle. Inns on the mainland came later in general, although there are a few older ones (ca. 800) in major ancient cities.
Get an education, kid. It won't hurt, I promise.
> didn't stay in high school, did you?
I did, which is how I know more than the contrarian pop culture history you do. Inns post-date the Roman Empire and didn’t necessarily have anything to do with pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Medieval England at the very least had a long history of pubs/inns that have nothing to do with the Hospitalers; read some Chaucer sometime you philistine (yes, the characters of The Canterbury Tales are on a pilgrimage, but it’s from London to Canterbury, not to the Holy Land). Inns feature in numerous of the tales.
You yourself observe that there are inns on mainland Europe dating back to 800 AD. And then outside of Europe/the Middle East, the oldest inn in the world has been with the same family for 52 generations in Japan, dating back to the 700s AD.
Yeah, people generally tried to stay with friends, family, or acquaintances. But that wasn’t always possible, and for as long as they hadn’t always been possible there’s been people trying to take advantage of it. For frick’s sake the foundational story of Christianity is centered on the idea that when Joseph and Mary got to Bethlehem there was no room at the inn so they had to stay in a manger. Whether or not this is a literally true story is irrelevant; it means that the idea of inns was already well-established. It’s not like inns just disappeared into the aether across Eurasia just because the Roman Empire changed management.
> Get an education
Yeah let’s do a review:
You: inns did not exist
Me: yes they did, for example the Romans had them
You: no they didn’t, except for all these examples that did, and also a bunch more examples that predate them
I don’t think *I’m* the one that needs a remedial education, dude.
>gets BTFO
>tries to come back
>can't do basic math
I've read the Canterbury Tales, which is why I know a) they WERE on a pilgrimage and b) they're set in the late 1300s.
Please notice I said that inns were established fairly early in England (ca. 1200s).
Inns on mainland Europe were *not* in random ass villages, my guy. They were in major cities.
I have a degree in medieval history if this makes it any less complicated for you.
> they WERE on a pilgrimage
But a) not to the Holy Land and b) were not staying at any inns connected to the Hospitalers.
> Inns on mainland Europe were *not* in random ass villages, my guy. They were in major cities.
I think you’ll find otherwise if you did even a modicum of research - not that I’m sayi Jr every podunk thorp in the middle of nowhere had them, mind, but they could be found in places outside of Paris and Hamburg and Rome and other major cities. Again, it’s not like the inns established by the Roman Empire just disappeared into the aether simply because the empire changed management, and even beyond those there was plenty enough trade and travel for the market for inns to exist, even if they were nothing more complicated than the local pub owner letting you throw down a sleeping mat near the hearth for the night (which is what most inns in podunk towns in D&D are supposed to represent).
> I have a degree in medieval history
Well then you need to take a remedial course in it because you are flat wrong about this.
AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT, it’s not like D&D or most other fantasy RPGs is supposed to ever represent the depths of the stereotypical Dark Ages where everyone was a mud farmer gathering filth and opining on the nature of executive power. D&D is anachronistic as Hell but very broadly could be described as more or less the high Middle Ages - that is, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, or in other words, exactly when you yourself stated that Hospitaler-founded inns started to proliferate across mainland Europe.
Meaning that for D&D and any fantasy game that’s trying to ape D&D, inns wouldn’t be anachronistic.
>But a) not to the Holy Land and b) were not staying at any inns connected to the Hospitalers.
Are you a legitimate moron? The hospitalier orders had hospitals, not inns.
>I think you’ll find otherwise if you did even a modicum of research - not that I’m sayi Jr every podunk thorp in the middle of nowhere had them
I have an actual degree in medieval history. Are you saying there's a research paper out there somewhere that says "umm, actually, inns were common and every town had one"? Because I assure you there is not.
>it’s not like the inns established by the Roman Empire just disappeared into the aether simply because the empire changed management
...the Roman hospitia largely transitioned back into the private residences they had been. Stabula (think motel) largely transitioned to just being stables rather than also providing accommodation to the traveler. Mansiones -- think caravansary or roadside waystation -- all disappeared; either they became the center of a settlement or were abandoned because nobody paid to maintain them.
They literally did just disappear back into the aether, anon.
>you need to take a remedial course
You need to learn to take an L, kid.
>AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT, it’s not like D&D or most other fantasy RPGs is supposed to ever represent
That was my point: once you start picking nits, the entire fiction of the D&D village unravels.
> The hospitalier orders had hospitals, not inns.
For the purposes of our discussion this is a distinction without a difference since in either case we’re taking about a place where travelers without other accommodation could bed down for the night.
> I have an actual degree in medieval history
I don’t believe you for a second, because even a cursory Google search would have found you several hotels, motels, inns, etc., in Europe with histories dating back to the 1100s or earlier and which have no direct connection to pilgrimages AND which aren’t located exclusively in what we’re then major cities. Hotel Alte Goste in South Tyrol, for example, is in Bolzano, which at the time of the hotel’s founding had less than 2,000 people in it.
Your degree in Medieval history doesn’t count if it’s just something you drew up in MSPaint and framed, you know.
> once you start picking nits, the entire fiction of the D&D village unravels.
That’s so not the point that you’re not even on the same landmass as it before.
The point is that your MSPaint Medieval history degree is telling you that inns didn’t really exist in mainland Europe until the 1200s to 1300s. Guess what: this is, very roughly, the era that D&D is aping. Meaning that it was ENTIRELY POINTLESS for you to bring up your fictional vision of the Middle Ages’ 8th or 9th or whatever century because D&D isn’t trying to be a copy of that era, it’s trying to copy an era when inns did exist and were prevalent. So why are you trying to claim that Medieval inns didn’t exist when they did, and you yourself confirmed that they did, in the time period that D&D is aping? Why did you bring it up? How stupid are you, and why did you think no one would fact check your obvious lies?
>can't take the L
>keeps digging
Sad. No wonder you're in your mother's basement shitposting on Ganker.
>trying to play the degree card on an anonymous site
>can’t even refute arguments
>but it’s the other guy who’s losing
>samegayging to try to snag a W
Jesus, Ganker has sunk
>everyone who disagrees with me is the same person.
1) that’s not me.
2) I cited specific examples three times that point to inns as an D&D nerd would understand them existing in the Medieval era, two of them outside of England.
3) And it’s all irrelevant anyway because D&D and games like it tend to broadly exist in a rough analogue of an era where you yourself pointed out that inns were proliferating across mainland Europe.
Until and unless you have a counter for (3), you’ve got nothing.
>no u!!!1!!!
kek
You're an adorable little sperg.
Instead of owning that guy with facts and information - like he did to you - you fall into simplistic childish insults.
Tbh it's been fun watching you spin-out, senpai.
Moar, loser.
Look at all this effort to avoid an L on an anonymous imageboard. If you applied yourself in school, you wouldn't be 31, no education, no career, no girlfriend, no prospects living in your mom's basement.
>no argument
>SAMEgay!!1!!ONE!!
>le irony of le pic
kek
It's even funnier because you're completely oblivious to your stupidity!
Moar.
>loser
kek
You got owned, kid.
Reed moar.
>I have an actual degree in medieval history.
No, you don't.
That is very nice. Did you use any specific tools/stock art or is it all hand made?
I could be wrong but I think i's campaign cartographer 3
Comfy as hell anon, what'd you use to make this? Looks like inkarnate.
i'd give it a "would save from a dragon" out of 10
>ok guys you are in a small town
Wow that was easy
>hmmm yes you did find an isolated hut mostly out of site from the other houses good job finding that anon
>you know what there is a well in the middle of the settlement
>yeah that building was completely demolished during the encounter
>yeah you guys are actually right beside each other so you hear anon getting into an argument
Imagine being beholden to some shitty drawing that doesn't even give you any information at least make an actual settlement
players are reduced to blubbering, messy fools if there is not a map, though
See here is the thing. Roleplay is a skill. It is something you can be good or bad at, and for that matter it is something you can improve at.
If your players fall apart without a map then stop using a map, take it slow, and them will slowly improve.
The map OP posted is useless, it's literally just a bunch of houses. Odds are the players just need to find an inn, a specific villager or some shops. If they are going to actually have to spend time here the houses should look somewhat unique or if this is going to be on the table it will need to be fricking huge to let miniatures walking around it
idunno. maybe its just nice and makes the world feel more lived in. you dont NEED art of monsters or PCs either, but fun things are fun
So make a map.
just have a list of locations they can visit. they dont need a map.
Just ask yourself the following questions:
- Why did people settle there?
Usually economic reasons such as good farmland, ores in a mountain or a river/coastline. Being easily defensible is a close 2nd for towns/keeps/casltes. e.g. on a hill or enclosed by a river's curve.
- What keeps them there?
Usually because of safety, tradition and the points above still hold true.
- Who's in charge and why?
Depends on the local politics most of the time.
If you can't answer these questions about your settlement it needs work. Accessibility to resources and infrastructure (usually roads) and the age of the settlement help determining size and population.
A village at a crossroads can turn into a trade hub and town given a few decades sometimes.
> Why did people settle there?
It's been so long, I can't rightly remember. There was a man who promised that this was the future. That everything would be better somehow. Earth seemed to be so full of disrepair and then a man came along promising electric cars and free speech and a ticket to mars and it just made sense. I guess we didn't think about it very much. If I could, I would go back and tell myself that there is nothing wrong with the ground under your feet. I was so young back then, just a child really.
> What keeps them there?
Ha! That one is much easier! Gravity, my boy!
> Who's in charge and why?
Well I guess that would be the bird. We type the words into the computer that it desires and in exchange food, water and clean air fall from the sky. Sometimes it wants us to talk about a thing called a 'movie', which always is a bit strange to me. I imagine these movies as far off worlds, much nicer than this one. But sometimes it wants us to be angry at a person. I don't know what this 'voting' thing is but every now and then it seems to become very important, so we type the words it wants into the computer.
In these lands no village that cant support at least 100 militiamen just don't survive
Can you guys kindly provide what you use to build city maps? I do not want to use those random generators as for some cities I want it placed exactly as I want it.
clipstudio
Playing with it now, you can do some interesting stuff with inkarnate
My biggest issue with Inkarnate is it's kind of tedious to lay down tons of stickers if you're doing a large, walled settlement.
Anyone have any advice?
Drawing settlement maps is a waste of time, unless you're publishing a module and need "art" to sell it.
Bullet point the useful locations, and give it to the players.
No I'm not burned out on making maps, just another day of being objectively correct.
Draw it yourself.
Just make a non-comprehensive map with the general footprint of the place blocked out. Make sure to include the relevant services and try to have a vague idea of what the local economy is like and why the place was founded.
Pic related is a small Dwarven fort town in the mountains I made for my 5e group.
What's an indecent settlement?
>indecent settlement
>Sodom, for sodomy
>and Gamora, which is an even weirder move
A thousand and one AI generators dedicated to producing off-putting, weird ass porn but apparently nobody thought teaching one to make cozy looking medieval village maps was a good idea.
This is why humanity is doomed.
Who's the audience for such maps? In all of my years creating games for people, I have never once needed a town map more detailed than this one. I understand that the people who like them take their enjoyment from creating them, so they also couldn't care less for such a generator.
Same reason I like to look at all the monster art in the rule books. Some people just like pretty pictures.
That's not a village map, that's a landscape art, and there are generators that handle it fairly well.
Ok, sure, that specific image is landscape art. You are correct.
Can I still have a generator that produces village maps though? Forget the landscape art for a moment.
You can. Enjoy this boring generator: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
Looks boring and abstract. Guess we really can't just have nice things.
Everything in this thread looks boring. Maps are boring unless you make them art.
Well good news if you actually run games and aren't just masturbatin on an imageboard, player groups travel a lot and most settlement maps are transitional stages at best. the players probably don't give a shit about what village forty two looks like as they travel across the kingdom. They care about where the shops are, where they can talk to knowledgable NPCs, whps in charge. they aren't going to sit there and go "Hmmm that water mill is too far downstream from the town, my immersion is destroyed". Unless you run urban adventures, the small town oustide the dungeon doesn't have to be a detailed masterpiece.
Unless your group is Critters, then by god you better have a voice for every merchant and random npc nd make sure there's plenty of representation. Not reality level either, like Marvel Comics levels of homosexualry.
tldr don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
>They care about where the shops are
No they don't. They only care if the town has a shop and what it stocks. Plotting every shop on a map in advance is the exact kind of toxic worldbuilding that hurts the game more than it helps it, as it's both boring and takes up time that could be spent coming up with things that are entertaining.
>Same reason I like to look at all the monster art in the rule books. Some people just like pretty pictures.
Frick man I could have an entire library of jsut "monster manual" like books for creatures, items or factions and I'd be the happiest man one arth, reading through them every night before going to sleep.
There are enough such books published for 3.5 to keep you busy for the rest of your life.
this post is why /tg/ will never be taken seriously
>calls others autistic
>posts a color coded bunch of hexagons and calls it a map
Yes, it's a map for a game (something that you have never experienced)
NTA but you sound pretty fricking autistic right now
See here is the thing, most people like to dress their game up in a theme a bit, rather then deal in pure abstraction. Even in chess we call pieces 'Knights' and 'Rooks' and 'Kings' rather than just calling them piece 1 through 6.
We take these abstract mechanics and then layer a theme on top. It's how real, non-NPC humans like to enjoy their games. So for a map, rather than just a bunch of hexagons, most people like looking at a semi-realistic drawing.
Anon, I...
Hexes are cool but this map is incomprehensible, the key is larger than the lap itself, and the colors are so similar that it's impossible to tell at a glance which color is which district; double-takes being necessary, the utility of this map plummets.
This homie got a pitchfork recharging station on his map. This is the fricking Mona Lisa of shitposts.
>Pitchfork recharging station
>Watermelon terraces
>Backwards people ruins
Just take a map of some random medieval village and trace over it.
> If only there was a machine to make shoes, then we would all have access to shoes
> Just take some leather and nail it into some wood
Frick anon its the twenty first century. We are literally trying to find ways to use computers to replace every aspect of human creativity while we slave away doing dumb shit like taxes or something. I don't think nice AI maps are an insane ask.
You should have just said you’re lazy, if you want a computer to do it for you then go play vidya.
> Just do more for your game
Sounds a lot like you have never run a game. A lazy GM is a successful GM.
>A lazy GM is a successful GM.
NTA, I wouldn't say that, but definitely a GM who limits their projects is a GM who won't burn out as fast or as hard.
Tracing a map is about as lazy as it gets
To be fair, the hobby has a long history of tracing.
And as tedious as it gets.
That actually exists
>https://watabou.itch.io/
Post your "Foundation" map
And to this day no player has ever caught on
Underrated post anon
What?
Is this a merchant or loss?
No it is a map from an MMO called Runescape. The point is to take villages from videogames, maybe vaguely trace their map if you're feeling spicy, and serve it up.
Players generally don't notice when you reuse locations from games they have played.
I would 100% notice stormwind or orgrimmar
you say that, but once ran my players through the OG deadmines, story and all, and they didn't catch on until like a week later.
literally the only changes i made was names, and mr smite was a bugbear.
ive long considered running vanilla WoWs defias and onyxia questlines for my players
vanilla WoW was straight up a dnd campaign anyway
Ok sure, some of the really big ticket place you avoid. But honestly you would not believe what you can get away with. I've been using this classic as a map for teaching newbies at the local store, week after week, for about a year now since the end of lockdowns. Nobody has ever clued on even the slightest.
Hmm you’re right if that’s from WoW i can’t tell what that is. Dire Maul West?
Anon it's in the filename. It's E1M1 from Doom.
Is that Bruma?
It is indeed Bruma. But without the Oblivion color coded map and it being very obvious from context that the map was stolen from somewhere, the players will never notice.
I would notice a morrowind, oblivion or skyrim town instantly. Ive spent too much time checking those maps not to.
The school textbook drawing of a medieval village is one of the most criminally underappreciated forms of high art that society has ever produced.
Like look at this shit. Does this not both inspire a sense of childhood nostalgia while provoking the imagination? I honestly feel sorry for anybody that doesn't feel a sense of wonder looking at these dirt shacks.
There are still villages that look like this, they're just swarming with americans now.
Yes but at least in the 1100s the kids didn't need to worry about getting shot.
Chester in particular decriminalised the shooting of Welshmen with a bow.
> A bunch of mud farmers were better at weapons regulation than modern day USA
Shouldn't have been shagging all the sheep if they didn't want shot.
Allegedly the story behind that is that stealing sheep was punishable by death, but fricking them wasn't. So from what I've heard that's where the legend started: thieves who were caught crossing the border lying to save their hides.
There was a lot to fear from the woods. The stories of olde are full of people disappearing into the forest because it's a fricking nightmare realm out there.
Good. Any shitbag kids that wanders into the forest deserves to get 'taken by the fairies'
>that classic move of taking kids to die on the woods because you can't feed them during a famine
Sure was fairies
> "Papa, what happened to my brother?"
> "I fricking killed him so we could eat, and if you keep asking questions I'll kill you too"
And that is how you raise a child. Folklore is a side effect of weak parents.
what are you, a commie?
What are you, a /misc/ poster? Go get some comfy images of villages.
>the kids didn't need to worry about getting shot
They just had a frickload of other things to worry about.
Maybe if you didn't post a picture for ants.
Based. Textbook art is god-tier.
They live only from fishing when they have a bunch of land to cultivate? But why?
The surrounding forest is an average of CR 5 on the encounter table, but the GM didn't have a table for the lake so its pretty safe.
This feels like a claims a campaign for cleaning the woods like England hunting wolves to extinction to allowed a safe place for cattle.
That might actually be kind of a fun gimmick for a hex crawl campaign. Try to emulate the economic expansion resulting from all the monsters disappearing by converting hexes into farmlands over time. Seems like a nice little detail to throw in for players.
cuz just cuz land exists doesnt mean its any good for farming.
the soil could be dogshit, there could be salinity problems, coastal areas are also generally shit for farming as well cuz of proximity to the ocean, the rainfall could be too little or too much to support crops. seasons could be too short to grow anything worthwhile, the list goes on and on.
food supplies based on fishing usually happens in areas where they cant really get food any other way, or where farming is a sub-optimal option that cant sustain a population on its own.
What do you want your settlement to do in the game? Helps focus how to build it.
> for me it's 1200
1700 is peak
I'm ALL about the 886.
>200
Soul
>1200
Soulless
>Filling up the moat/water way
I absolutely hate this.
Any reason why? Issues historically? Don't like the look? Issues paying the water bill?
I kind of feel like if you're building a castle then putting it right next to a river is a good way to prevent attack from at least one side, and if you want to dig a moat next to a river then it is going to fill up.
Look at how much greenery there is within the city walls. Seems like a nice place to live if you don't mind dying of dysentery.
Anon there’s over 6000 settlements in the UK considered villages, many of which are hundreds of years old. Just use a real map. Nobody will know.
Making a pretty picture for a "settlement" is 100% pointless work.
>Dungeon '23
This isn't what you are calling it right?
>The forest wouldn't be that close to town. If the walls are pallisade the townsfolk would have cut down the nearest trees to save time and cost of transportation. There should be a wide swath of cleared land from all the shrubs cut to make charcoal and rope, trees to make firewood and lumber, and there should be vegetable and herb gardens adjacent to the houses.
>Without any topography it appears as if the town is built over flat silt that will wash away should there be a flood. The houses built here will sink on their foundations.
>Everything is far too square and geometric. Square city plans were an invention of the enlightenment. Old European towns and cities are built on a jumbled mess of curved roads and paths. Even a new world city like New Orleans has a confusing maze of roads that make no sense, almost as if the city grew organically from a series of plantations that originally fit the natural topography of the area. BTW, the French Quarter is the only area of NOLA that doesn't flood specifically because it was built on solid raised ground.
>Draftsmanship is fine but too clean and "computery" for my tastes. I can tell a program made this, not an artist working by hand.
is far too square and geometric. Square city plans were an invention of the enlightenment. Old European towns and cities are built on a jumbled mess of curved roads and paths.
romans are autists that's different
>no true scotsman
Remember it for next time. Or ignore me. I'm a pedantic ass.
Better than mine
Look at city and town plans from history. Learn why things were placed where they were, what you might expect to find in a settlement of whatever size etc. That's what I did to make towns and villages for an old west campaign I am running right now.
tangentally related to the thread, i recalled this article from dragon i read some time ago when reading through all these lovely posts. i wonder if anyone has created a better or updated version of this table, or similar list of town/city buildings, for modern d&d? i would never actually roll on something like this table, but just taking a look at the odds is nice to think about
I used to make maps, nowadays I just pick a generic village image from google or pinterest and narrate what it has.
did this while waiting for a player to show up. the We were joking the circle building is a fish silo
>Can easily make great dungeons and battle maps with dungeondraft
>Wonderdraft makes it easy to slap together a world map
>Theres nothing for easily making a visually pleasing town or city map.
Why's it gotta be so hard.
It is actually really easy with even simple image editors. GIMP is a free one.
What you are missing is the art assets to just drop down onto the image. If you can find an artist that does a style you like that goes a long way. I don't mind Russ Hapke.
1. Biggest gripe is mansion/keep/fort is on the edge of town with no towers facing the outside. Usually it's inside the town.
2. Fort would usually support military ships or a at least a pleasure boat.
3. Docks would likely have some warehouse.
4. There would probably be some minor gates.
1. I think that's a prison as the staircase to access the upper area of the gatehouse is on the town side of the wall.
>A plaza for a temple and some commerce
>Some houses
>Nearby farms
Seems easy to me, sounds like a skill issue on your part. Granted making it look good is a challenge, but overall those are the elements that make a settlement.
>The mansion was built after the village had already been founded.
> Not just knocking down a few peasant shacks to make room.
medieval towns were sprawling. the feudal system gave a minimum of 1,000 acres to a noble (not all farm land). That noble had to provide a number of services to make that land productive, so where those services were centered would form a village, but most of the towns people lived on their farms away from the village center.
The farmers were grouped together 2-4 households which worked 80-120 acres together.
I don't think I've seen many games properly give this feel to their towns.
Your whatever-it-is doesn't look like a gold-rush town. It looks like a military outpost or some sort of logistics hub in hostile territory. If it's a bunch of gold rush people, it would be a disorganized little town without such heavy walls.
If "it grew and was around for a while", then it needs a new reason for existing, and still needs to justify the walls. Also, your keep doesn't look like "the friendly rich neighborhood bullshitter" - why does he have four towers pointed TOWARD the city?
And I insist that he would want to be on the coast for fishing, escapes, guests, pleasure boats, taking shipments, etc.
When you sit down to play a game do you actually complain about these things, or are you just trying to be contrarian for the internet?
His critique is objectively correct. If someone posts their map, they will recieve others thoughts on it. Thats how things work you know.
Cairnwood-anon looks to me to be a clear cut case of someone who just loves to stare a neat graphics too much to think about 1) gameplay and 2) versimilitude.
Let me also be very clear that the map is perfectly usable despite being poorly concieved.
This is the first map I've made with Inkarnate, there is no excuse for a bad map.
seems a bit short on houses.
with all these fields and orchards I would expect a much larger population
NOT FOR THE AMOUNT OF FIELDS. NOT SURE FOR THE SIZE OF THE CHURCH BUT IT WAS 2-3 HOUSEHOLDS PER 80-120 ACRES.
THIS MAP IS THE BEST i HAVE SEEN AT INTEGRATING THE ACTUAL FIELDS INTO THE LIVING SPACE.
No, there isnt a graveyard, the houses dont have gardens for growing their own herbs and keeping a pig or so, there are no orchards or trees, there are no barns, the ploughed fields are right next to the back doors of houses. Theyre medeival but theyre not ploughing right up to their door, they liked their space just as much as we do.
Needs more houses, especially for the size of that church and to have a village hall. Not sure if the dyer's house needs to be labelled, it should probably be by the river though. Should also be a village green, more orchards too.
I like the edits anon, I did add a few more houses as was suggested above.
ok but seriously a church needs a graveyard and a rural village needs at least one barn. Houses also had gardens, these could be small but were often long strips or sections which i tried to reflect as much as possible. There should be an orchard or several, should be some bees kept, and should be at least some buildings for producing neccessities, such as wool. The houses dont need to be so clustered unless theres a wall, they'd typically be set out slightly so that theyve each got their own garden. Its actually quite fun making these tbqh.
Don't forget that the church should have an archery range so that the locals can get some practice and recreation in on Sundays.
Uhhhhhhhh. They just do that in a field idk.
Nice looking allotments, I like how much effort you put into recreating my map.
It was a nice layout in principle, just needed more personal space. Although that app is quite addictive, halfway through mini not-Antioch now.
This is the only village map I need.
And it's the only one you should need also.
>This is the only village map I need.
>And it's the only one you should need also.
Absolutely BASED groganon.
Anybody got any ideas for something unusual or unique that a small village might have? Typically more unique stuff ends up in cities. Wondering if there are any ideas for something that feels right to put in a small town but also would be the only one of its kind.
for me it's just copying pensylvania
For me, it's setting it in Pennsylvania. My setting is post-apocalyptic, and I live in Eastern PA. Picrel. (specifically "Fiat Lux," the middle part)
very, very wealthy town to have that much of a wall system for such a small seeming population.
I don't know, it looks like a wooden palisade. Very quick and cheap to put up. Wouldn't take more than a few men with shovels and axes a few weeks.
With Inkarnate's clone and edit stuff, I was able to make this one. I like it!
why build walls and towers where people cant walk to?
Banished or that barony-manager successor whatever it's called needs a god mode to just make village maps.
This one, for some reason, gives me a vibe of 'small town where a successful adventurer was from and they returned home with wealth.' It also feels more rustic, less 'city' and more of a strategic town along a river used for lots of trade.
The manor house's position bothers me but I'm not sure where I'd move it to. Having a water escape is a good idea though to one side of the village sets it up to be attacked more easily.
The wharf at number 5 feels a bit weird. Generally in these harbour side situations people like to build their important stockade/fort/manor/what ever on top of the biggest hill that overlooks the water. Makes sure they are only defending from a land based attack from less directions, and if anybody comes in by boat you can shoot at them from your defended position before they land. So typically it is nice and high above the town, which I can very clearly see is happening here. But then there is this wharf sticking out that looks like it would be 50 meters above the water because it is coming off the headland rather than the bay. And if the land sloped downward to be level with the water, it would be such a steep slope that erosion would mean your structure falls into the dip in the next few years.
It's a nice little ramp, and honestly could be used for some fun encounters in game.
Raiders are coming in by boat and the party is outgunned but has the advantage of a bottleneck and high ground as they make their landing. Seems good.
Speaking as a newcomer to the discussion... this is coming along nicely, Cairnwood-anon.
A suggestion, though? Depending on how rough the neighbourhood is, you might want to put a few more watch-towers along the perimeter wall. My recommendation would be two more in Area 5 (at the eastern and north-eastern corners of the sub-compound), one at the north-western corner of the main village compound (just north-west of the windmill), and one or two on the north-eastern corners (facing the forest).
Attention. Attention everyone.
This is now a map stealing thread. Everyone post maps from worldmaps, battlemaps, settlement maps and city maps. Only criteria of course is that its gridless.
On my end, I am willing to let you steal this spooky town in the middle of nowhere. Perfect for a random encounter when your players explore the Forrest!
I kinda like when they have grids because then you know what the intended scale is.
>city planning is hard
Go figure.
UM FRICKING UNREALSTIC???? THERE WOULD BE PATH WAYS UP THAT CLIFF FACE, NO ONES WALKING ALL THAT WAY EVERY DAY FOREVER UH FRICKING BAD MAP DM FRICKING GROSS
Anyone use talespire? whats it like?
Play something like Rimworld or Farthest Frontier and take a screenshot.
When Manor Lords comes out properly it will make the most kino villages.
anons, you ARE aware of https://www.cartographersguild.com, yes?
Thx
Welcome to the town of Riverford, where people fish from the river, farm the fertile land around the river, work in the textile mill powered by the river, and have a bustling inn to service travelers making use of the bridge to cross the river.
Well first remove those trees and add more farm land.
No.