Whenever the players first enter a 'settled' or 'mostly settled' hex, d3 villages should be randomly generated and placed in that hex, assuming a hex size of 6 miles. [It is likely there would be more villages than this in 'real life', but d3 is fine for game purposes.] Then, determine village characteristics as follows:
Size
1 - Tiny (3d20 inhabitants)
2-4 - Small (1d100+20 inhabitants)
5-10 - Average (1d100+50 inhabitants)
11-12 - Large (1d100+100 inhabitants)
There will be number of inhabitants/6 houses, number of inhabitants/50 shrines, and 1 hall per village (rounding up all fractions).
Layout
1 - Centralized: houses grouped together around the hall, with rice paddies encircling.
2-4 - Scattered: houses spread evenly, separated by rice paddies, with a hall somewhere in the middle.
6 - Dispersed: the village represents a spread-out and sparse series of tiny hamlets and individual farmsteads, only loosely united, with a hall located apparently at random.
NPCs
Each village has a headman, a priest for each shrine, and a number of NPCs from the following list (1 for tiny, d2 for small, d3 for average, d4 for large):
1. A mad hermit
2. A hedge witch (25% chance of being a level 1 magic-user, otherwise a charlatan)
3. A healer (25% chance of being a level 1 cleric, otherwise a charlatan)
4. An expert guide who knows about all of the contents of the hex
5. A locally reknowned beauty
6. A retired hero
7. An exiled criminal living as an anonymous farmer
8. An expert baker
9. An old man revered for his extraordinary wisdom
10. A locally reknowned hunter
11. A great story teller
12. A great flute player
13. A great singer
14. A visiting sage, studying the local night sky
15. A visiting sage, studying the local wildlife
16. A visiting sage, studying the local dialect
17. A fortune teller
18. A man who has been panning for gold in the local stream for years
19. An escaped slave
20. An escaped eunuch
Resources
1. Poor - the village has barely enough to scrape by
2-5. Average - the village produces enough of a surplus to trade with the nearest or most accessible town
6. Rich - the village has a special resource; roll d6:
- Nearby forest is rich in furs
- Nearby river is rich in fish
- Tiny amounts of gold are sometimes found in the river
- A small amount of opium is grown in a hidden field somewhere
- The soil is very rich, so the villagers can afford to sell a percentage of their children into servitude at the nearest town
- The villagers have organized a toll on the nearest road or river
Each village has 1 special quality from the following list:
1. A secret stash of savings is hidden under the village hall, worth d300sp.
2. The villagers are very hospitable, but kill, rob and eat visitors who stay the night.
3. The villagers shelter a group of bandits.
4. The villagers worship a giant crayfish who lives in a nearby lake.
5. The villagers breed giant velvet worms to help them hunt.
6. The villagers are very hospitable, but abduct visitors who stay the night and sell them into slavery.
7. The villagers speak an unusual dialect that is impossible for outsiders to understand.
8. The village has a fighting pit, and the locals will challenge visitors to wrestle their champion.
9. The villagers eat disgusting moths that they consider a delicacy.
10. The villagers are plagued by a group of bandits who live nearby.
11. The villagers are plagued by poisonous scorpions which inhabit the rice fields, rendering them unusable.
12. The villagers have a pet giant frog who has a 10% change of becoming aggressive if outsiders enter the village.
13. The villagers eat a type of mushroom that is mildly poisonous; they build up an immunity from an early age but outsiders will be violently ill and incapacitated for 3 days if they eat the fungus.
14. There are weirdly colourful snails everywhere, because of some characteristic of the local climate.
15. There are weirdly colourful beetles everywhere, because of some characteristic of the local climate.
16. The villagers are unusually short and stocky; it is rumoured that their ancestors were dwarfs who bred with humans, though everybody knows this is impossible.
17. The villagers worship a mantis god who demands animal sacrifices from visitors.
18. The villagers have the skeleton of a yak folk on display in the hall.
19. The villagers know where there is a mi-go lair in the mountains.
20. Almost all the menfolk were conscripted to go to war two years ago by the local oligarch, and none returned.
21. The villagers have a spell book a wandering wizard once 'left behind'.
22. The villagers are cannibals who eat the dead.
23. The villagers have a blood feud with the next village.
24. The villagers have a blood feud with a group of yak herders in the nearest 'hilly' hex.
25. The village is divided in two between two large families and their allies, who are hostile towards each other.
26. The village is frequented by gamblers seeking to avoid taxation in the nearby towns.
27. The villagers harvest a special kind of moss which has health benefits.
28. The village has a hot spring.
29. There is an ancient monument in the village.
30. There is a group of ancient statues in the village that it is rumoured are golems which will one day come to life.
That is way cool, thanks for posting!!
ReplyDeleteExcellent.
ReplyDeleteWell at least the villagers have the decency to kill folk before they start eating them.
ReplyDeleteI like, here's what I made with this generator:
ReplyDeleteVeerhaven and Hostwick
Hex 39.14
Here, along the waters of the Keening Sea and subject to the laws of the City of Shuttered Windows, lie two small villages.
The smaller of the two is the fishing village of Veerhaven, if it can be called that for it is little more than a string of cabins and drying racks strung out along the coast. However, it is richer than any small village in the City’s shadow has any right to be for just off the coast lie the rotting ruins of a score of gilded war barges and, although most of the gold has long since been stripped away, the men of Veerhaven still find bits of gold in the mud. However, each year brings in a smaller haul and the giant snapping turtles are voracious so many of the people of Veerhaven have turned to fishing or even farming.
One of these farmers is actually a Smiling Man and is hiding here from his brethren. The locals take little note of him and think him simple. They, especially the young women, pay far more attention to a young fisherman named Bren. He is a good fisherman and an ever better storyteller who tells many tales of the rocky island that lies several miles off the coast that all Veerhaveners (except Bren, if you believe his tales) avoid out of fear of having their brains collected. Bren has not yet married out of fear of the fate that a wandering seer gave him: that he would die before ever lying with a woman. However, he believes that he has found a way to avoid his fate for he has recently pledged his love to a Hostwick girl and promises that they will marry after his next fishing trip.
The girl in question is Alena, the daughter of the headman of Hostwick, a farming village a few miles north of Veerhaven. She accompanies her father on the flute when he does his duty and beats his elfskin drum to inspire the farmers to greater efforts in the fields. But ever since Alena began making the walk to Veerhaven to see Bren, her songs have grown stranger, with strange lilting melodies that the villagers have never heard before.
The farms of Hostwick lie scattered around a central knot of buildings with no defenses to be seen, for fear of the Doge of the Shuttered keeps reavers and dark beasts at bay, even this far from the City’s walls. Luckily for them, the soil here is rich and there is plenty of food left over even after taxes are collected. The main food crop here is a variety of radish that grows large, white and bloated. It not only fills the soup pot, but its leaves satisfy some of the hungers of the caterpillars of a certain species of moth.
This moth is considered a delicacy by the locals and is fed in great quantities to the boys of Hostwick. If the boys develop the proper signs, they are castrated and sold to the Necromantic Office (which keeps the White Road quiet and provides other services to the Shuttered City). This trade keeps coppers in the pockets of the villagers, but it makes it difficult for many village girls to find suitable husbands. Some of them marry the folk of Veerhaven or even travel to the City itself in hopes of finding their brothers.
wow. thanks for illustrating how a few rolls on these tables can construct the setting for a series of adventures. Nice work.
DeleteVery nice, reminiscent of the Border Princes sourcebook for WFRP - thanks!
ReplyDeleteI rolled up the following: a tiny village consisting of 17 people -including a headman, a priest, and an expert guide - which despite its minute size manages to maintain 5 buildings; 3 houses, 1 shrine, and 1 hall. The hall sits at the centre of fields of rice paddies, with each of the other 4 buildings occupying a corner of the village territory.
Passers-by often speculate on how such a tiny community manages to support itself - a question which is doubly vexing if one walks attentively through the rice paddies, for most of them lie either fallow or rotten, or are otherwise unproductive. The secret lies under the village's shrine, which is actually nothing more than a cover for a small underground farm of opium poppies. The village's priest is no holy man... although those who partake of his "ritual drink" may soon come to perceive him as having divine power. Most of the current residents of the village are not natives, but travellers who became hooked on the local brew, and serve their narcotic god by acting as guards, couriers, and toughs as needed.
The village sits in the shadow of two huge iron statues, crudely humanoid in appearance. Legend tells that the statues, ancient guardians of the once-prosperous territory, will animate and spring into action if they are told that the community's honour is in danger (which it most certainly is): how one is to communicate this to a deaf and dumb statue is a whole other matter.
Very cool. And yeah, there's a reason why it's reminiscent of that book - it's an all time favourite of mine.
DeleteHuh, I guess that means it was your blog that first introduced me to it - for some reason I thought I'd come across it via Zak S. Thanks :D
ReplyDeleteNeat. Reminds of the great random town and village tables in the back of the Invid Invasion book of the Robotech RPG. Good villages make great additions to the story.
ReplyDeleteFinally got around to writing something I've rolled up from this: http://rpg-maths.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/village.html
ReplyDeleteVery cool resource.