Town and Settlement Rules

 

Krzysztof Maziarz

When you are inside a town, things take either wilderness/hex turns (three in a day), town turns (take the whole day), or downtime turns (take a week). Each town has 2 stats: Earthly and Otherworldly. Earthly represents the population, resources, and temporal influence. Otherworldly represents the prevalence and power of the mystical. Each ranges from 1 to 5. A 1 in Earthly indicates a hamlet, 2-3 a town, 4 a city, and 5 a metropolis. Similarly, a 1 in Otherworldly indicates minimal magical presence, 2-3 would be average, 4 probably contains some notable society of magicians or priests, and 5 would be something like Endon in Magical Industrial Revolution. 

Hex Turn Actions

Find Shop

To find a shop, first determine what category of item or service you are looking for. Then, roll under the relevant town stat on a d6. If it succeeds, you find the item or service. If you fail, you don't. Repeat this. If you succeed, it is a specialist shop. If you fail, it is a shelf or hidden inventory in a more general shop, containing perhaps 3 items. If the category is simple necessities (typically food or farming equipment), you find one, but can still roll to see if it is high quality fancy stuff.

If the settlement is of considerable size, one can take a second hex turn to try again. If it is small, the DM may say that there is no more stores in town to check. If it has a Bazaar or Market, roll twice and take the better.

Find Quest

To find a quest, roll both stats. If one or both is over, there is a problem in the associated aspect which could do with solving. When it is solved, somebody of that aspect owes you a favor.

Religious Attendance

By spending a tenth of your recent earnings, you buy some sacrifices/donate to the church/purify yourself with incense. You become Ritually Pure, and gain the favor of local religious-types. As well, roll under Otherworldly and you get a minor blessing (post forthcoming).

Have a Good Meal

By spending twice the cost of a ration, gain 1d6 HP (or temporary HP) and have a nice meal. You only benefit from this once per downtime period, but if there is a different pleasant, restful thing in town, like a hot-springs, patisserie, or lodge, you can gain an identical benefit from that.

Local delicacies:

Town Turn Actions

Get an object repaired

Choose an object you want repaired, re-enchanted, or elsewise fixed. Roll under the corresponding town stat, and you find tools, materials, and possibly expertise to do so. Otherwise, it is only half repaired, and may break again or not work perfectly.

Do Chores

You do enough odd jobs and errands to afford 3 rations, or else obtain three rations worth of favors.

Relax

You decompress after some traumatic adventuring, and clean all the blood and muck off yourself. The combination of your civil attitude and appearance gives you a +2 to reaction rolls with people.

A Night on the Town

You go out drinking responsibly, having a good time at some pub or nightclub. Spend at least 3 rations, but no more than 10 rations. This counts for 1.5 times the XP.

Rumor Gathering

The Old Ladies, Bartenders, and Midwives share you the gossip. Roll under Earthly and you get some blackmail material, roll under Otherworldly and you hear some true sounding spooky happenings. In addition, roll on whatever rumor table you have at this time.

Downtime Actions 

Train

Working by yourself or with a teacher, you learn part of one skill. By spending three (possibly non-consecutive) downtime actions training that skill, you can become proficient. You gain a small benefit or feature, as well. For instance, the ability to make a second unarmed attack, the ability to pick a specific kind of lock, or the ability to try an impress someone with snippets of a language.

If one of your stats is below average, you could raise that stat by 1, up to slightly above average.

Research

You put out feelers and gather information, whether ancient lore or castle blueprints. If you roll under the relevant town stat, you find at least one piece of information regarding your subject of study. For instance, you might find a stanza of a poem, a useful diagram, or a map with a few rooms filled in. It is definitely true. Otherwise, treat this as several rolls on the rumor table.

Magical Experiments

Select one spell of yours, or one rune or scroll you've found. Describe as well the way you will be experimenting. Depending on the way you experiment, an intelligence (or other mental stat) check, a roll under the town stat, or a sacrifice of materials or coin may be required. You learn a version of that spell which is appropriate to your caster level and is changed slightly to reflect your conclusions. If you fail, save vs. magic or take (caster level)d10 damage.

Set up a Base

You use favors, money, and elbow grease to set up a little place where the party can meet, sleep, and do a bit of preparation. Roll over Earthly and its free, because it was abandoned or you made it yourself. Roll twice more: if the first is under Earthly, it has the amenities you are used to (such that you no longer need to roll for tools for Repairing Objects); if the second is under Otherworldly, it has magical resources enough to do Magical Experiments.

朱玮玮/Zhu Weiwei

[These are abstractions for when you don't want to play out the whole thing, or for when you are unsure of something. If you can run everything by yourself with full detail, and you want to, then you should!]

Domain-Play options for low-level Characters

 

Pictured: The party's base

Cheaper Strongholds

I never got why stronghold building was so expensive. OSE says that a small tower (presumably two floors) costs 15,000 GP to build. That's 1,500 pounds of pure gold. I am no historian, but I find it hard to believe there was that much gold in all of England at the time. That's enough to feed and house 10 labourers for Three and a Half years. I cannot believe it takes so long to build what amounts to a fortified stone hut (even if it was built by the DoT). Even supposing half of it went to material costs (which, there are almost none if you are building a wood keep, which was common) and permission from the lord, that's still 10 labourers for more than a year and a half for something which (according to OSE) takes 30 days to build. Unless making cobble walls (which are all over peasant farms) is much harder than I think, such that those labourers are being paid 50 gp per day (that is, five pounds of gold), this is utterly unreasonable.

 

Firstly, Silver Standard. Secondly, laborers are payed 10 sp per day. It takes 10 labourers a week to build fourty square feet of stone wall on the ground, two weeks if that wall is more than 20 feet above the ground. Half this time and double the height at which it is considered above the ground if you are building in wood. Double the time, the height, and cost if you are building with cut stone. If there is not material available on the worksite (i.e. your wooden tower isn't in a forest, your stone tower isn't on a shale cliff, your cut stone tower isn't in a quarry), you must pay an additional five labourers (per ten labourers) to collect and transport it. Less than this and construction slows. 

 

Players should draw the floorplan of their stronghold. This may then be used (by adding up the surface area of the walls) to calculate costs and time. DM's should put a limit on how many labourers they can hire, based on how many are available and how many would cause overcrowding (i.e. no peasant railgun). Normally 7 can be found in a 1 mile hex on the frontier, and 15 in civilized lands, 30 in populous places. There is a 1 in 20 chance per week of an accident, which may kill 1d4-1 workers and destroy (1d3-1)*40 square feet of wall, but at the least delays the construction another week.

 

Pictured: a 600 sp, 6 week investment.

The Ruins Homestead Act

 

The king and his nobles have become tired of the mismanagement of the land, tired of bandits and goblins hiding out in keeps and waylaying travelers, tired of paying amoral mercenaries large sums and finders-keepers rights just to have the damn ruins fill up again next year. Thus they have approved the Ruins Homestead Act. 

 

If a group of freemen clear out a dungeon with an above ground section, and present half the treasure to the Lord whose land the dungeon is on, give him or his representative a tour of the dungeon to ensure its safety, and swear fealty to him, that group shall be given the land the dungeon occupies and one hide of land around it per fully enclosed room above ground, up to a total of 10 hides, as well as any serfs who live on that land. If this gives one more than 3 hides, one of the company becomes a Gentleman and is a noble. More than 6 hides, one becomes a Knight. Both are expected to render military and other services.

Pictured: guaranteed knighthood