Towns And Cities

Basics

A hex that contains a Town or City built under these rules loses the benefits of any rural or wilderness developments that already exists in the area. Nor can you add any other developments to the hex that are not listed in this Town/City section. If you are planning to build a town or a city in a hex, you need to think carefully about how to develop it. However, it is worth considering a phased development and there are notes in both the Wilderness and Rural sections that talk about upgrading hexes.

Every time you invest BP into a town/city hex two things happen. There is an urban development inside the city perimeters and there is some suburban development somewhere else in the hex. Suburban development happens automatically and is just the farms, small holdings, fisheries etc that spring up to service the town. It happens automatically, and you don’t have to worry about it unless you want to build a home or estate close to the city.

The bigger your town, the more suburban development is required to feed it. By the time you have built a city, the whole hex will be dotted with small villages, hamlets, thorps and farms – but none of them, or their residents, will be exceptional in anyway. All the exciting developments happen in the urban area.

You need to ‘own’ a hex before you can develop it. If you haven’t already done so, you should read the “Claiming Land for your stronghold” and “Getting Started Stronghold building a stronghold” pages before you continue.


Clearing the Land

To start with you must prepare the settlement area for building. This means cutting down scrub or trees, removing boulders, levelling hummocks, so that you have a reasonable place to build. The cost of preparation varies according to the terrain you choose. You need people to do this work for you, so the cost includes building a small Tenement Building to provide housing for your workers. This building and its residents are the very first part of your town. This prepares enough ground for one city district. Second and subsequent city districts and upgrades are cheaper as you already have people on hand to do the work. This includes upgrading a rural hex with a village to make the first district of your urban development.

Terrain Plains Hills Forest Marsh Mountain Desert Jungle Cavern
Initial Land Prep 2 3 3 5 5 5 5 5
Subsequent and Upgrade 1 2 2 4 4 4 4 4

Urban development is measured in ‘Districts’ and ‘Lots’.

A lot is just an abstract unit of development that represents an investment of 1 bp and attracts something like 100 people to the area. Some of those people will live inside your town, the rest of them will make a living in the suburban areas surrounding the town. Larger developments can take up one or two building lots. A district consists of 20 building lots and therefore represents 20bp of investment and approximately 2000 people in the area of the town. 20bp is an arbitrary limit, chosen to make the maths easier :}

Type Lots Districts Base Limit Purchase Limit Building Restrictions (See Note1)
Small Town 1-20 1 1,000 gp 5,000 gp -
Large Town 21 - 50 2-3 2,000 gp 10,000 gp -
Small City 51-100 3-5 4,000 gp 25,000 gp -
Large City 101-250 6-13 8,000 gp 50,000 gp -
Metropolis 251+ 13+ 16,000 gp 100,000 gp -

Building Restrictions. You may only have one of each building in a district. That doesn’t mean to say your town can only have one pub - but it means you have to think about it a bit more. There might be a hotel, an inn, a tavern, a restaurant and innumerable smaller bars, cafes and take aways spread around the place. It just means that you can only have one of each building to contribute to the city’s stats.

Purely residential buildings are not restricted – you can have as many Residential (classification) buildings in a district as you want. Differentiated buildings are not restricted either: for example you could have a Craft Workshop (Leather Work) and a Craft Workshop (Wood Work) in the same district or a Sword School and a normal School.

One per district doesn’t mean that the building have to be physically placed in separate districts. If you have three districts you can build (or upgrade) three Hotels all in the same district, next to each other - so long as they are the only three hotels in your town.


For every BP you spend, you can develop up to 1000gp worth of buildings from the following building lists. Each building will give something to your town – measured in Economy, Loyalty, Security, Defence and Magic Items. You need to keep Economy, Loyalty and Security about level for your town to stay a nice place to live :}. Get them out of Sync and the DM gets to roll on the ‘Bad Things Happen’ table.

Urban Buildings by Cost
Urban Buildings by Clasiffication

Notes on residential properties. {R-} {R}, {R+}, {R*}
Notes on Crafters and what they can produce. Workshops {M}
Notes on Religious Buildings.

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