Designing a Settled Area
As you map out a settlement or collection of towns in a settled area, start with two fundamental questions: why is it here, and how does it survive? Even the largest cities once started at one point as small towns. If a town survives, it has a reliable source of water, food, and reasonable protection from invasion by other settlements or by monsters.
Most towns start on a river or by a lake, though some can originate at the crossroads of major trade routes, relying on consistent traffic to meet their basic needs. Be sure to include a source of water and a means of acquiring food and necessities when designing a settlement.
Also consider the physical environment around your settlement. You wouldn’t find a town of steep-roofed wooden houses in the middle of a desert, as there are no trees of the appropriate size to construct such buildings and no snowfall in a desert mitigates the need for sharp angles on rooftops.
Think about the purpose that the area serves for its inhabitants and for its nation, if applicable. Why is this area settled? Is it simply a fertile land, or is it a point of military strategic importance? Is there a vein of precious metal to be mined?
How close are the various settlements in the region? Do they work together or are they rivals to one another? What kind of features mark the countryside? Windmills, farmsteads, and the like are examples. Are the roads well constructed and are they maintained adequately?
Having considered your settlement’s physical location and how it fulfills its basic survival needs, you can now flesh out more information about specific aspects of life in this society.
Five Facets
When designing a settlement of any size, you can quickly orient yourself by considering five facets of life that shape the culture and texture of any populated area. Consider an area’s economic, military, political, religious, and social capabilities and attitudes. As you read these five facets of life, note that they all feed into one another to some extent, as no aspect of life is truly isolated from the rest.
Economic
How is the settlement faring from an economic standpoint? Is it self-sufficient or does it rely on trade with neighboring areas? If so, how heavily does it rely on trade and what would happen if trade partnerships or the physical routes connecting towns were disrupted?
Does the settlement encourage innovation and career mobility, or are folk more or less constrained to trades that they were born into? Is this due to a circumstance of life or due to the political policies enacted by those in leadership? Are common goods abundant, or is it hard to reliably find decently made products? Is standard gear priced above or below the average, and if the prices are higher, is it due to scarcity or monopolism?
Military
Does the settlement have a standing military, a volunteer militia, or some other form of protection? If part of a larger nation, do they rely on a centralized national army or on hired mercenaries to keep their region safe?
How inherently dangerous is the region? Whether bandits or monsters or something else, are travelers likely to feel safe within a day’s journey from the settlement? How does this affect inter-settlement trade patterns?
Does the same entity that protects the town from external threats also police it internally? Or are town guards and law enforcement separate legal entities?
Political
What is the settlement’s governmental system? Is it autonomous, or a smaller part of a regional or national government? When considering both local and national politics, think about various real-world political systems and which ones would apply best to your vision of the settlement. Some of the most famous political systems throughout history are provided on this table below. You can roll on the table or simply use these ideas as inspiration for your own political design.
When considering the politics of a region, it is also important to remember that MythCraft is a highly magical system, and magic is generally accepted as real and present throughout the world. How prevalent is magic in this society? Are enchanted brooms and pans that cook by themselves commonplace, or is there a ban or a steep luxury tax on such goods?
| 2d6 | Governmental System | General Principles |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Theocracy | The intermediaries of gods (such as prophets or priests) make legal rulings based on the messages that they receive from the divine. |
| 3 | Thievocracy | An illegal criminal organization, such as a mafia, runs the entire nation in practice, even if the nation is nominally maintained by a monarch or elected official. |
| 4 | Totalitarianism | One political leader holds absolute authority and exercises both hard (military) force and soft (economic) pressure to maintain their power. |
| 5 | Monarcy | One individual, typically a king or queen, rules the nation. The monarch may or may not employ a council of advisors, which might resemble an oligarchy. |
| 6 | Aristocracy | The noble caste rules over merchants and common folk. Nobles might be decided in a number of ways. “Blood” nobles are those born into a noble heritage, while “sword” nobles earn their title through military power. A family that rose to prominence as sword nobles might be considered a blood noble family generations later, if they maintain the region in a fashion that their constituents find tolerable enough not to revolt. |
| 7 | Feudalism | Feudalism lends itself well to administering a large nation. Local officials report to regional officials, who in turn report to the central governing body. On a localized level, a town’s guild or a farmer’s union might operate using the basic feudal structure. |
| 8 | Oligarchy | An area ruled by an elite few. These elites might be theocrats, a mafia family, aristocrats, plutocrats (individuals that control a vast majority of an area’s wealth), military commanders, or some other powerful entity, but they generally choose their own successors much like a monarch might, keeping power within their own families. |
| 9 | Federalism | An organized group of cities, states, or factions, each of whom get a say in the governing of their area. On a national level, a federal government might oversee several states or provinces. On a local level, a federal city might be run by elected officials that represent the interests of various guilds. |
| 10 | Democracy | A society that governs itself by electing officials to make decisions on the people’s behalf. Officials might be limited to only serving for a set number of years or being voted out of office if they are deemed incompetent. Direct democracy allows every citizen to vote on every matter, which might work in a town but is impossible on a national scale. Representative democracy allows local settlements to elect leaders to vote on their behalf in a smaller governmental body. |
| 11 | Communism | A communist society purports to distribute wealth and access to necessities equally to all of its citizens, ensuring a shared equality of life. |
| 12 | Socialism | The means of resource harvesting, production, and distribution are owned by the collective people of an area. Similarly, society as a whole is responsible for its own governance. |
Note that many national governments might have multiple governmental systems. Feudalism, for example, supposes that the mayors of various towns will defer to the nobles who oversee the regions that those towns occupy. The nobles, in turn, are usually answerable to a monarch. Thus, one could argue that feudalism is a hybrid of tribalism, aristocracy, and monarchy.
Similarly, a communist society’s redistribution of wealth and resources is often overseen by a totalitarian dictator or a body of centralized power such as a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. This ruling power will generally keep far more wealth for itself than what it disseminates back to the population.
Religious
What are the pervading religious beliefs in your settlement? Do the citizens of the region typically worship a specific pantheon or even a subset of a pantheon, such as two or three specific celestials?
Throughout the settlement, is there religious uniformity or are there multiple religions, or differing factions within a single religion? Are there atheists or agnostics in the settlement? If so, are they able to share their views freely or would that cause social contention?
Are outward displays of piety looked upon favorably or with scorn? Is attendance of religious services mandatory or only encouraged by the local clergy?
Social
What is a settlement’s social life like? Do they welcome strangers or are they wary of them? Do people tend to be at ease or guarded around their fellows? Can children play in the streets unsupervised?
What are some major holidays that the settlement might observe? These could be religious in nature, or they might be related to the turning of seasons and agricultural practices (such as a planting festival in the spring, and a harvest festival in the fall). Holidays might be held to honor influential leaders from the past or present day. If the adventurers participate in such a holiday, will they observe people enjoying the revelry or making performative gestures out of obligation?
What cultural moments are particularly contentious in this settlement? Perhaps rumors of a nearby monster or bandit group has some people on edge, and might have other folk excited for some reason.
Along a similar line of thought, does the settlement have any special buildings or institutions in which the citizens take special pride? Maybe there’s an arena or stadium where gladiatorial matches, chariot races, and the like are held. Perhaps the settlement has a theatre or a scholarly university.
Consider Occupations
If you want to go into a little more detail, you can also use the BOP occupation tags as a frame of reference. This will have some overlap with the five-facet approach. When creating a small town that your adventurers will likely only spend a session or two exploring, the five-facet approach will probably be sufficient. When developing cities or populated areas that will greatly impact your campaign or if you anticipate the adventurers spending a lot of time in such an area, it can be helpful to consider each of these aspects in greater detail.
Academic
What is the typical education level of your settlement? Are most people literate, or are scribes considered especially well educated? Is there a school or university in your settlement, or do those with an education learn from a traveling mentor who occasionally stops in to teach for a month or two before moving on? Either way, is education widely available to anyone with the time and interest, or is it reserved for the elite? In some settlements, perhaps it is even required of people to get some base level of education, while in others it is expected that one’s education will simply be through apprenticing for a craftsperson.
If your population is generally well educated, how does this affect the economic and governing apparatus of your society?
Aristocratic
The aristocratic tag overlaps a bit with the political facet of society. Consider your society’s elite, whether they inherited their titles or are simply the elite due to their amassed wealth and influence. The aristocracy in any society are rarely a monolith, as they often engage in back-room dealings to outmaneuver one another in both influence and enforceable power.
Who are the major players in your society’s aristocracy? If you have a hard time coming up with ideas, think about the most powerful individuals that correlate to each of the other occupations. Are they considered aristocrats? If not, they likely have friends in the aristocracy. What are the goals of these specific occupational leaders, and how might this shape the members of society’s elite?
What do the layfolk think of the elites? Are they distrustful, grateful, or indifferent? Perhaps they hold a more nuanced mix of opinions on the upper echelons of your settlement.
Mercantile
This occupation tag has considerable overlap with the economic facet of society. Additionally, think about whether there are notable competing guilds in an area and what their goals are. Do they simply want to control the market and maximize profits, or do they have some other goal? Are merchants able to freelance or are they required to register with a guild or with central governing powers?
Militant
The militant occupation tag entirely overlaps with the military facet of society.
Religious
The religious occupation tag entirely overlaps with the religious facet of society, though depending on your campaign setting you might want to pay special attention to conflicting pantheons or religious sects if they will be relevant to your story.
Underworld
What is the criminal element of your society like? Is crime rampant or uncommon? If crime is widespread, are criminals comfortable committing crimes in the broad light of day? Are crimes primarily physical like stealing and mugging, or less tangible, like white-collar fraud? Either way, why is the governing and military presence in your settlement unable to stop these acts? Are they bought off, or in on it themselves, or simply too poorly funded to adequately prevent crime from flourishing?
Wandering
Does the settlement see a lot of travelers? How receptive is it to people from beyond their own borders? Do traveling performers, long-distance merchants, international healers, and the like experience a warm welcome or a cold shoulder when they arrive in your town? Is there an institution to receive them, such as an inn or guild hall specifically tailored to long-distance travelers?
Follow Every Thread
When building a society in great depth, never shy away from allowing your questions to lead to more questions. As you think about how the various facets of society and/ or occupations interact with one another, you will find unique connections between guilds, aristocrats, and public sentiment. This is where your settlement really begins to take a life of its own.
The World Keeps Moving
MythCraft campaigns are specifically designed to span several in-world years, or even decades. Allowing your settlements and their inhabitants to age and change at a rate commensurate to your campaign’s pace can be tremendously rewarding for your players, and is one of your best tools when trying to make your world feel immersive.
When your adventurers return to a settlement that they visited some time ago, consider what has changed in the interim. If the society has endured months or years of hardship, many buildings might be boarded up and in a state of disrepair, goods might be more expensive, and the population might have thinned out a bit as emigrants seek more prosperous lands. If the settlement has flourished, then it might be notably larger than it was when the heroes last visited.
Introducing young or elderly NPCs is an especially potent tool for this kind of long-term storytelling. The gangly thirteen year old kid that the heroes met years ago might now be an apprentice learning a trade. The barkeeper’s daughter might now own and manage the inn herself. The elderly herbalist that the heroes bought potions from might have since passed away, their practice left in the hands of a younger relative or apprentice.
You can achieve this same effect with NPCs of any age by describing the deepening of care lines in their face, gray in their hair (or whatever the appropriate equivalent given their lineage), and perhaps their shifting outlook on life.
When the heroes visit a town, you can also use this kind of descriptive detail to plant seeds for future adventure arcs. Perhaps the carpenter’s teenage son has temporarily taken over the business because his father has taken ill, or is away in another town trying to fix one problem or another. Not only do such interactions make your world feel meaningful and alive, but they also propel your story forward by giving your adventurers plot points to consider.