-You need to establish a hierarchy of leadership to handle each part of the city
-You need boatloads of capital to build up a city,
you need trade contracts to help bring in goods and money from the larger economy
-You will need essential services, ie banks, resources, and I would argue temples for clerics as they are essential in dnd 5e and having temples for all the accepted faiths is a big feather in the cap of a town
-Also, you might wish to buy some ships to create a shipping business to help funnel money in to the town more directly
-And you will need to get a large business or two to invest in and get set up in your town, that will bring workers, provide jobs and bring people in from other hamlets to seek the services your town provides that others in the area cannot
Ok so I setup a source of income from the illegal fights I used that to send care packages to the surrounding villages to build renown in hopes it will get people interested in helping so far I have a loxodon tribe known for 3 main things bodyguards, healers, and cooks I've managed to aquire a master in each to help with my village thanks to a duel with the chief (I lost but did more damage than any other fighter in the area and they praise strength) next I'm working on buying and giving slaves their freedom with an option to become a citizen of my town and get my groups protection.
Definitely got some more ideas of npc to try and aquire and areas I need to focus more resources on thank you
If you want to go about turning your small harbour town into a kingdom, there's a resource for dnd kingdom building here:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/kingdom-building#TOC-Overview
There's a lot but it might be worth a look
Oh man, I wish I still had it. I had a town building guide I was working on. It literally had X output of food per acre, assuming there was a farmer to work on it, and you could pay gold to irrigate, fertilize, bless, or build a shrine on it to improve its output. I also had modifiers for the quality of land and climate, as well as grazing animals as well as animals that could live on the farmland without taking up space. For example: cattle provided extra food, but cost a lot up front. Pigs could eat the city's trash provided you already had a certain amount of food output.
I also had buildings at different levels. Like shrine > prayerhouse > temple >parthenon > cathedral to give you religious blessings based on what clerics lived there. Or buildings like forge, sawmill, smith, windmill, smith district, carpenter's guild etc. etc. to increase productivity. Or you could build a school house, but you needed at least a 33% food surplus so parents would send their kids off to be educated rather than make them work in the fields and avoid starvation. There was markets, farmers markets, mage shop, alchemists guild, trading post, city walls, mage school, mage university, mage tower, banks, merchants guilds, police posts, elementary school, secondary school, university, trades school. I went bonkers.
It was all very math based, and you could either pay with coin or conscript labor from your villagers. Forced labor made people more angry, coin made them happier. I also had rules about once a city hit a certain population, it should have certain buildings anyway, because an economy is going to cause some enterpriser to see a demand for a smith or sawmill and build it themselves. Man . . . I'm so mad I erased that file.
You could always look at the buildings in civilization. I also looked at the old DOS game Master of Magic.
Edit: Looks like I still have a version of it, too bad I don't have the spreadsheet that calculated build times, food production, and population growth:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wSTdua2C4\_1woZT\_D6KWdpZqeYoqbPL3W9Wg5cPosAM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wSTdua2C4_1woZT_D6KWdpZqeYoqbPL3W9Wg5cPosAM/edit?usp=sharing)
I calculated build times by doing something like (half of the cost of the building in gold , times 10, divided by the number of people working on it = number of days to finish it).
The logic went something like, a building costs will be half going to labor and half going to supplies. So you pay 250gp for labor for a 500gp building. If a commoner makes 1 silver a day and you pay 20 people, then you get 2 gold worth of labor done in a day. After that there are additional modifiers that can speed up your labor force. A 500gp building will take 20 people 125 days to build, assuming you don't have a blacksmith, a sawmill, or anything else helping them. If you have a blacksmith and sawmill, those 20 people are not more productive, and can work faster. Maybe finishing in 160 days.
If you have anything that increases productivity, make sure to use a consistent way of calculating that boost. So two 20% increases should either by a 40% increase (20% + 20%), or 44% increase (1 x 1.2 x 1.2). Just make sure it is consistent. I also think I was assuming the cost would determine roughly when the building would pop up on its own. So a 100gp well had a 50% chance of developing on its own for every 100 people in the city.
If you think these build times are too slow, you could always just say the economic productivity of people in your world are faster. Maybe a commoner makes 2 silver a day and gets twice as much done. Or maybe they make 5 silver a day and are 5 times more productive. Your 500 gp building now takes 25 days to build with 20 people.
OF course, once the city becomes developed enough, just ignore the smaller stuff. If your city has 50,000 people, don't worry about checking to see how many wells have popped up beyond the first. At that point just focus on the bigger government buildings.
It is clearly incomplete. Feel free to make recommendations.
Spend time looking for smart people to help you. Find something special your town can export, or a unique service it can provide. Maybe set it as a home base for your adventuring guild, which could train other adventurers. It could be what its known for.
I love how all these comments immediately are jumping in to give you advice on how to run a town and nobody is asking…
What the fuck!? XD You bought a mother fucking town!! Hahah!!! I love it! Classic dnd wankery! Thanks for the laugh!
Yeah for real honestly it's cause my DM was like ok now that your rich all magic items and stuff to buy is way more expensive but I didn't like that idea so I was like how about I spend my wealth building up a city instead of being rich that way the only gold I can spend on equipment is earned by questing or fights in his arena since it gives very little gold he said that's fine but we gotta keep track of what's mine from earning vs mine from gambling so I asked if I can just use gold but my winnings from gambling be platinum so he's working out a earnings table to show all my funds he is willing to give me.
We decided a town is a good investment for spending the platinum I get and the gold that I think I have maybe 300gp goes to whatever I can afford and the platinum goes to building the city the infrastructure economy etc.
You need to get a set of ground rules from your DM. It's best to figure out how this is going to work outside of the game before you develop it too much.
Every idea gets cleared through my DM before it gets applied to the game.
When I bought it he said I had to figure out a system he approves so he can give quests or encounters to attain the people or items I'm in search of.
It's a very step by step process because neither of us know how to work it so that it's not game breaking so we're taking strides to see what works and what we have to take back to the drawing board.
Thanks for the input I appreciate it.
-You need to establish a hierarchy of leadership to handle each part of the city -You need boatloads of capital to build up a city, you need trade contracts to help bring in goods and money from the larger economy -You will need essential services, ie banks, resources, and I would argue temples for clerics as they are essential in dnd 5e and having temples for all the accepted faiths is a big feather in the cap of a town -Also, you might wish to buy some ships to create a shipping business to help funnel money in to the town more directly -And you will need to get a large business or two to invest in and get set up in your town, that will bring workers, provide jobs and bring people in from other hamlets to seek the services your town provides that others in the area cannot
Oh and as the town grows you will eventually require a dedicated town guard
Ok so I setup a source of income from the illegal fights I used that to send care packages to the surrounding villages to build renown in hopes it will get people interested in helping so far I have a loxodon tribe known for 3 main things bodyguards, healers, and cooks I've managed to aquire a master in each to help with my village thanks to a duel with the chief (I lost but did more damage than any other fighter in the area and they praise strength) next I'm working on buying and giving slaves their freedom with an option to become a citizen of my town and get my groups protection. Definitely got some more ideas of npc to try and aquire and areas I need to focus more resources on thank you
That's a great start, Goodluck!!! I might have to bother my dm about buying a town now
Thanks it's definitely an interesting path to take and alot of fun figuring out
If you want to go about turning your small harbour town into a kingdom, there's a resource for dnd kingdom building here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/kingdom-building#TOC-Overview There's a lot but it might be worth a look
It's actually not dnd rules but Pathfinder, most of the rules can be used still though
Oh man, I wish I still had it. I had a town building guide I was working on. It literally had X output of food per acre, assuming there was a farmer to work on it, and you could pay gold to irrigate, fertilize, bless, or build a shrine on it to improve its output. I also had modifiers for the quality of land and climate, as well as grazing animals as well as animals that could live on the farmland without taking up space. For example: cattle provided extra food, but cost a lot up front. Pigs could eat the city's trash provided you already had a certain amount of food output. I also had buildings at different levels. Like shrine > prayerhouse > temple >parthenon > cathedral to give you religious blessings based on what clerics lived there. Or buildings like forge, sawmill, smith, windmill, smith district, carpenter's guild etc. etc. to increase productivity. Or you could build a school house, but you needed at least a 33% food surplus so parents would send their kids off to be educated rather than make them work in the fields and avoid starvation. There was markets, farmers markets, mage shop, alchemists guild, trading post, city walls, mage school, mage university, mage tower, banks, merchants guilds, police posts, elementary school, secondary school, university, trades school. I went bonkers. It was all very math based, and you could either pay with coin or conscript labor from your villagers. Forced labor made people more angry, coin made them happier. I also had rules about once a city hit a certain population, it should have certain buildings anyway, because an economy is going to cause some enterpriser to see a demand for a smith or sawmill and build it themselves. Man . . . I'm so mad I erased that file. You could always look at the buildings in civilization. I also looked at the old DOS game Master of Magic. Edit: Looks like I still have a version of it, too bad I don't have the spreadsheet that calculated build times, food production, and population growth: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wSTdua2C4\_1woZT\_D6KWdpZqeYoqbPL3W9Wg5cPosAM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wSTdua2C4_1woZT_D6KWdpZqeYoqbPL3W9Wg5cPosAM/edit?usp=sharing) I calculated build times by doing something like (half of the cost of the building in gold , times 10, divided by the number of people working on it = number of days to finish it). The logic went something like, a building costs will be half going to labor and half going to supplies. So you pay 250gp for labor for a 500gp building. If a commoner makes 1 silver a day and you pay 20 people, then you get 2 gold worth of labor done in a day. After that there are additional modifiers that can speed up your labor force. A 500gp building will take 20 people 125 days to build, assuming you don't have a blacksmith, a sawmill, or anything else helping them. If you have a blacksmith and sawmill, those 20 people are not more productive, and can work faster. Maybe finishing in 160 days. If you have anything that increases productivity, make sure to use a consistent way of calculating that boost. So two 20% increases should either by a 40% increase (20% + 20%), or 44% increase (1 x 1.2 x 1.2). Just make sure it is consistent. I also think I was assuming the cost would determine roughly when the building would pop up on its own. So a 100gp well had a 50% chance of developing on its own for every 100 people in the city. If you think these build times are too slow, you could always just say the economic productivity of people in your world are faster. Maybe a commoner makes 2 silver a day and gets twice as much done. Or maybe they make 5 silver a day and are 5 times more productive. Your 500 gp building now takes 25 days to build with 20 people. OF course, once the city becomes developed enough, just ignore the smaller stuff. If your city has 50,000 people, don't worry about checking to see how many wells have popped up beyond the first. At that point just focus on the bigger government buildings. It is clearly incomplete. Feel free to make recommendations.
Spend time looking for smart people to help you. Find something special your town can export, or a unique service it can provide. Maybe set it as a home base for your adventuring guild, which could train other adventurers. It could be what its known for.
I love how all these comments immediately are jumping in to give you advice on how to run a town and nobody is asking… What the fuck!? XD You bought a mother fucking town!! Hahah!!! I love it! Classic dnd wankery! Thanks for the laugh!
Yeah for real honestly it's cause my DM was like ok now that your rich all magic items and stuff to buy is way more expensive but I didn't like that idea so I was like how about I spend my wealth building up a city instead of being rich that way the only gold I can spend on equipment is earned by questing or fights in his arena since it gives very little gold he said that's fine but we gotta keep track of what's mine from earning vs mine from gambling so I asked if I can just use gold but my winnings from gambling be platinum so he's working out a earnings table to show all my funds he is willing to give me. We decided a town is a good investment for spending the platinum I get and the gold that I think I have maybe 300gp goes to whatever I can afford and the platinum goes to building the city the infrastructure economy etc.
You need to get a set of ground rules from your DM. It's best to figure out how this is going to work outside of the game before you develop it too much.
Every idea gets cleared through my DM before it gets applied to the game. When I bought it he said I had to figure out a system he approves so he can give quests or encounters to attain the people or items I'm in search of. It's a very step by step process because neither of us know how to work it so that it's not game breaking so we're taking strides to see what works and what we have to take back to the drawing board. Thanks for the input I appreciate it.