Worldbuilding 5b: Thorp

In structuring the game world, I need standardised words that describe a standard physical thing.  In the real world, a thorp might apply to half a dozen differently sized habitations, including a village, a hamlet, a farm or an estate.  This fluidity grows out of places having once possessed a small collection of farm buildings ... and as it grew, it resisted discarding the word "thorp" and continued using it.  A modern dictionary is concerned with defining all the possible uses of the term, but I am not.  I need a "thorp" to mean the smallest possible collection of buildings that serves as a "facility."  We discussed facilities in general with this post.  Going forward with part 5 of the series, we'll be discussing different facilities that become progressively more complicated.

A thorp has about 5-20 persons, who may be classified as rural workers who are not farmers — yet they largely exist to facilate farming.  The operation of a grain mill for example, or a "garner," which is a storehouse or a loft for grain.  Other facilities might be a sawpit, for turning lumber into planks, an ox tether for holding oxen for loading directly on their backs; a reliable well; or a boat dock if the thorp is located on a waterfront.  They usually include 2-4 hovels, or houses of about 225 sq.ft, made of whatever materials the area allows — wood, wattle & daub, adobe, loose stone & caulk ... whatever can be made with amateur knowledge.

This is just one kind of thorpe; others occur
wouldn't be seen on a map this scale.

Thorps are everywhere.  On the 6-mile map, they can be found at the end of a dead-end road.  All type-7 hexes will have at least one, sometimes two or three, spaced closely together.   There may be dozens in more populated hexes, but with the appearance of full-sized villages and country towns, thorps tend to balloon into hamlets or get swallowed up by larger places.

They have no political importance.  Any place large enough to have even a small group of elders would rate as a hamlet.  The thorp's purpose is largely economic.  They serve as places where a farmer, located too far from a market, can deliver their produce in exchange for pay or barter; the thorp then transships these goods along roads to a bigger centre for profit.  In turn, locals able to do so can pay to have their grain turned into flour, or buy flour outright from a mill; carters or wagoneers can fill water barrels for a return trip; hunters might use a thorp as a residence during the hunting season, making their camp adjacent.  Thus a thorpe may be surrounded by 5-20 tents representing seasonal occupants — the aforementioned carters, assayers, carpenters putting in their supplies for the next three months, mushroom hunters ... even a herbalist or a resident druid.

Player characters might do the same, making an acquaintance with the thorp's residence, setting up tents for their hirelings or henchfolk, then leaving behind tools and extra weight before plunging into the wilderness.  Players might even meet hunters and let the hunters lead them into the wilderness for some distance, as the hunters would know the country better than anyone.  This allows the players a reliable basecamp making plans and explorations.  They might even choose to gain permission from the thorp — which might be wholly independent or might technically belong to a minor lord — to build a permanent structure and storehouse.

It's necessary for me to point out that a thorpe like this could better serve the trope to which D&D normally assigns to a local tavern.  The thorp is literally on the edge of the wilderness; or located in areas where beyond a few farms, most of the countryside is untempered hinterland.  The woodsmen or hunters venturing inside aren't trading on rumours; they can literally take the players a half dozen miles into the wilderness, point at the edge of a mountain and say,

"Yep, pretty sure there's orcs up there.  None of us like to get too close; but poor Bertrand's body was found in the creek bed there, at the bend where that spur juts out.  See it?  We figure they made him carry his own goods that far, when they killed him and stripped his body.  He wasn't wearing shoes, and his feet were good and cut up; he must have walked three miles before they hacked him apart.  Corpse was clean, though ... layin' in that creek like he was.  If you all start climbing up to the top of that spur and then along it 'til you come to that cliff-face ... well, I wouldn't be surprised if you found a cave of some kind about there."

Moreover, if the party is of the criminal bent (and I don't make moral rules for my party's actions), they can probably handle a thorp as second or third levels, provided they pick their moment and there's none too many strangers around.  Potentially, they could pick a place with 12 residents, kill 'em off, ransack the habitation for at least as many coins as they'd find on a dozen wandering orcs, load up the oxen, mule, donkeys or perhaps even a cart that's convenient and just head off down the road.  Most likely, they'd have a day or two to travel before anyone saw what they'd done, by which time they could trade off their animals (which could be recognised), take a less-travelled road and find their way into some village before ever being suspected.  Players could hit two or three such places without getting caught ... by which time, the plundering wouldn't be worth it any more.  They'd have to look for something bigger.

There's no reason for a DM not to make thorps like this convenient.  Players can use them to spend money on resupplying (though they couldn't buy much beyond flour, meat, fire logs and other things associated with the professions named above), build up an association with locals and still participate in all the familiar parts of D&D that players like.  We wouldn't have to trade in "rumours," but in facts. The world becomes a lot bigger when we don't have to put the village right next to the monsters when we can put lesser stages of infrastructure in between.  Plus the thorp in on scale with lower level parties, unlike, say, a full-sized Keep.