Generation: Village No. 1

So I had this idea.  Then I got busy, then I got back around to it ... and yeah, why do I have these stupid ideas?  Let's make this clear:  I'm not offering a practical way to worldbuild with this post, because I can attest from experience that it's NOT practical.  What I'm trying to do it give insight into my thinking process, to enable the reader to gain perspective.  

I didn't particularly enjoy this project.  II have no intention of taking it up for town and city creation.  Maybe someone else might ... but without better resources and the ability to draw, I found making representations of hexes very unpleasant.  What you're going to see should be taken as representational and NOT accurate in scale.

Starting with a generation table.  This one is tailored for a small village in a type-4 hex with two hammers.  Also, since there's no shoreline, there's no waterfront block.  The manor block is combined with the village centre.

I haven't tested this out yet.  I'm going to test it with this post and see how it goes; all I can offer is that I've made many hundreds of tables as a DM, giving me a sense for what a table needs.  I want this to be heavy on hovels and cottages, for those things determine when the village generation ends, when we've placed all the people.

We only need one temple block, so the table gives an alternative to the temple once it's generated.  I'm suggesting that for a small village, there's a good chance a temple won't be generated.  This doesn't mean there wouldn't be a local priest; only that the religious guidance in the community takes the form of a friar or a minister operating from a cottage, probably gathering the means to eventually build a temple.

I propose to make three villages, not necessarily all with this post.  I may leave off later villages for another post; each will require an augmentation of the shown table.  For the moment, I want to see how hard this goes.

Let's begin with a village "stub."  As shown on the map, we have a village centre already; if one occurs when we roll on the table above, that would be a second village centre block (with a very low chance of that).

Because we're starting with the smallest possible village, exactly 201 people, I'm not including a bridge block in the random generation above.  Instead, we'll suppose a stream so small that it can be easily crossed without needing a bridge.

The image shows the red-roofed bakery and the large manor house, the gallows platform and four cottages; effort has been made to make the ground look worn and muddy in places.  Not sure the effect works.

Naturally, the next block has to be placed somehow in relationship to the centre ... and here's what I propose.  Zooming out, with the map showing below, I've assigned "weighted" importance to hexes surrounding the one we have. 

Level ground adjacent to the village centre gets a "3."  Stream hexes, with their access to good water, get a "2."  And other hexes within two of the centre get a "1."

The total for all hexes showing is 32.  Of course, we could assign the numbers different, giving more stress to the river or counting all the hexes three out from the centre.  There's no "right" way to do this ... but by picking this method, I'm demonstrating how any method might work.

As I see it, the goal is to produce a pattern that creates the greatest amount of individuality.  We could have every added village block automatically attach to an existing hex ... but that's certainly going to make a dense clumping pattern for every village.  Remember, the distance across a hex is only 435 ft.  We can imagine the first immigrant watching the place where the squire or first residents chose to build their places, and then comparing what might offer personal opportunities for the new builder.  Keep in mind, too, that villages are NOT made as a body like a modern subdivision.  They form over a lot of time, with former fields and orchards being bought and then built upon.  Our random generation should reflect that.

So, counting each hex horizontally and then vertically, and using excel to generate a number between 1 and 32, I roll a "31."  This puts me two hexes straight south of the village centre.  Rolling a "09" on the percentile die, I get cottages.  Let me add those, and then adjust the weighted numbers for further generation.

It's like a separate little community.  Maintaining the new river hexes as 2 each, the cottage block adds +1 to each of those hexes that already had a weight.  This supports the idea of a continuity being created, without guaranteeing that one will.  Even if one does, we can imagine a path between the two existing hexes; that could be drawn in later to "fill out" the design once we know where everything is.

Let's count people.  The village centre block has 40 residents (going by the last post).   The cottages have 50.  That's 90 people accounted for.    Three more cottage blocks and we're done.  Meanwhile, weighted hexes add up to 39.  Now that we've provided some idea of how the weighting works, let me generate two hexes before updating the map.  I roll 1-39 and get "28," creating the bridge in the right-handed 4-weighted hex.  I roll a hovel block.  That's 70 more people; 160 total.  A single cottage block could end this.

Just for fun, we'll say that LOWERS the adjacent hexes with a penalty of -1 (who wants to live next to hovels?)  That lowers the total weighted hexes to 31 ... a roll on excel gives an "8," on the river right and above the village centre block.  I roll a 92, which is the temple.

Hm.  The temple block includes a cemetery, and that can't be built on a stream hex.  I thought something like this might happen.  Okay, we keep the temple and re-roll the location.  A "14" puts the temple immediately to the left of the village centre.  Good.  Let's put up what we have so far.

The temple is as important a block as the village centre, so it adds +2 weight to adjacent hexes and +1 to hexes two distant.   Rivers are always 2, regardless.

The temple hex added another 10 residents, which puts us at 170 total.  There are only 31 people to account for.

Yes, the village ISN'T a big place.  It shouldn't be.  When it comes to making a village of 500 people, obviously we'd just be getting started.  There'd be plenty of opportunity for rolling a yard or market block, which is why I'm keeping the likelihood of those small.  As it is, the market can be managed for a village this size in the village centre.  Anyway, let's keep going.

Total weighted numbers are 42.  Because of the temple mixup, better roll what we're placing first.  Oops, I get hovels.  Oh well, game over.  That's everyone.  I roll a "19" for location and that puts them beside the temple.

Not the prettiest little village in the world.  We remove the weighted numbers, add in a main road and a path to each hex (the temple sits amidst a lawn, so the many tiny paths to it aren't showing) and we have something of a settlement.  The next step would be to create a random generator for the adjacent "rural" hexes, a system that would work the same way.  Assume there's probably more than a few adjacent fields next to this set-up ... it wouldn't be right if I didn't get around to building that idea out, so rely on me to get there.

The main question remains, one that I've addressed before.  What use is this?  In game, I don't need a map so I can tell the players, "There's a small centre with four cottages and a manor house, while nearby are a collection of hovels.  Beyond the hovels, there's a group of better looking cottages; a road goes to it.  You came in by the west road; the road continues past the village to the northeast.  There's a temple and another collection of hovels on the other side.  The whole is surrounded by a bend in the river, but the village is recessed back from the banks.  It's a very small place."

Granted, the players won't have the tactile impression the above map offers, but do the players need it?

I can think of two situations where the above is useful.  The first would apply if the players decided to build here, or wanted to settle.  Choosing which hex to put a house, or where to build a fortification if the players were in authority over the region and liked this village.  After all, we can't see from this map where we are in the bigger picture.  Maybe this is the right distance from a big trade town or it's conveniently isolated.

The second might be a situation where some large-scale attack was taking place.  Consider: the hexes are 435 ft. in diameter.  That's 87 combat hexes.  Running all out, by my movement-stride system, a character with 5 action points can run 40 combat hexes, or 200 ft., in a combat round.  Imagine seven players, supported by 40 hardened semi-trained villagers, a la The Magnificent Seven.  Because the enemy might come from any direction, characters are posted around the village ... in the centre, by the temple, amidst the hovels and the cottages.  A first wave of raiders, 90 altogether, come from three different directions.  The mage by the temple sends a message spell, "HELP!  Fifty attackers!", as the balance is coming from the north.  The two players amid the cottagers decide if one of them can handle the 20 coming from the south, or if they should send one of the villagers with a message.  How long will that take?  How many rounds can one of the players by the cottages fight it out here, before running off to join the other fight?  If he or she has only 3 AP, that's only 24 combat hexes a round at the best of speed; the temple is 174 combat hexes away!  That's seven rounds to cover the distance.  Even longer if we don't want to go through that bit of "rural" country that's straight between the cottages and the temple.  Is that a forest?  A planted field?  An orchard?  We'd have to generate which.

There's a grittiness offered by a map like this, but ONLY if the exact space is measured.  Nothing annoys me more than being given a high quality artwork city map without a scale, or on a scale so big (1 inch = 500 yrds) that it's useless for the most important duty a map serves ... as a MILITARY strategy map.  I don't need a collection of tiny boxes and street names for gaming.  I need something that can serve as a grand battle map, into which I can fit little battle maps for individual fights taking place between villagers and townspeople against raiders or uprising citizens.

Okay, I need a break.  We'll do a bigger village with the next post.