How many towns?

[ikki]

On one hand, it would seem logical to concentrate all into a single city.

But yet.. you end up with a good bunch of ready or fixable buildings across the map. Not to mention the need to find those rulers...
Such as maybe the satyr and dryad, in which case the capital would have to be foudned around the tree. (ooh high cha!)

That the biggest city is elsewhere should just make the kinga nd queen happier ;)

Atleast spreading out like that makes it somewhat believable the owlbear could smash stuff up, when theres a giant general ;) so rivertown was smashed.. and the general was busy at stagfort! (the economical capital)

[HNB]

I am not exacly sure what you are trying to say (this may be due to my lousy grasp of the english language), but
in terms of rules it isn´t necessary to build more than one city, thats right.

It is more a flavor thingy and adds some realism to the campaign. Just give your players(?) a stability bonus.

Edit.: I did not spell necessary nessecary. No, I didn´t.

[Kvantum]

Well, if you want some degree of realism in settling a largely empty land, you might look at the example of the American Great Plains and Midwest. County seats were set up 30 miles apart so a farmer on the county border could travel the 15 miles into town with a horse and wagon, sell his wares, and make the return trip all before sunset, so no more than 5 hexes between towns might be an idea to shoot for.

[ikki]

optimation, in short.
I suppose you could rebuild the temple... and have a ton of graveyards and monuments and such around there

then the two castles, and nobl villas etc ther

and so forth. Or just stick to a single city.
Just curious what the rest have decided is best...

[kenmckinney]

Kvantum makes a good point.

If county seats were traditionally 30 miles apart, and you assume that a town is in the center of its hex, that means that you should have a town roughly every other hex. I like the 'get home by sunset' rationale... that makes a lot of sense.

Ken

[kenmckinney]

Hmm,

I'm wishing there were more rules that covered this.

What if , for a town to build a certain structure, its hex had to be adjacent to X developed farmland hexes? And what if your 'castle' could only be upgraded if you had a certain number of towns? That would add some game elements that would force the PCs to take and develop significant amounts of territory.

Ken

[feytharn]

AND building towns close to any exploitable recource (mines, fertile land etc.) makes a lot of sense. If your workers end up investing as much time and energy into travelling to their workplace as in work itself its a damn waste (not to mention bandits and monsters attacking your workers and your loot...ahm I mean your recources on the way.
Additionally - markets mean taxes and larger towns need markets.

[thenovalord]

we are just assuming there are lots of little settlements in and around the farms. So if there is a farm hex, next to a mine hex, we assume there are 15-30 people living there, some who farm, so who mine, but dont have enough impact to affect the kingdoms numbers!

This way there is also somewhere to stay in any hex with road, farm etc

[Grendel Todd]

Having two groups running around one map, I get the joy of seeing both methods in play. My Thursday crew has been focusing on their one capital (set up at the Stag Lord's Fortress), and though they periodically discuss setting up another settlement, after 10 months, they have yet to do so. The other group has set up three, jumping every other hex, covering the Temple of the Elk, Oleg's Outpost, and most recently Tatzlford. The big advantage of multiple settlements that I've seen so far is the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" principle - there are certain Events that are pretty much city related (such as Disaster, which only has a slim chance of hitting multiple settlements). Don't forget, we still haven't seen the War rules yet, which also may make having multiple settlements relevant (or may not - oh the joys of making judgments on rules unseen).

[Gibberer]

You could even have a community spring up in response to the players and their actions without the players being directly involved.

In my campaign the first book took nearly a year, which gave plenty of time for the first changes to follow.

In addition to the group of guards and the cleric scheduled to arrive automatically, the cleric...moving elsewhere later, I also assumed that the bandits had been extorting from the sparse local population of hermits, barbarians and at least one maker of potions.

Once the bandits were weakened local trade, such as it was, increased on top of whatever the PCs wanted to purchase or sell. As a result the small monthly caravan would increase, eventually nearly doubling in size and becoming a biweekly caravan. This in turn led to the first settlers of Oleg's Fort to begin trickling in, while Oleg hired a pair of servants and then tried to invite a specialist or two.

By the time the second book was beginning the permanent population had gone from Oleg and Svetlana to @30 but with the families of several newly arrived farmers expected later in the year.