In UC the shack states:
This no-frills wooden shelter contains a simple table, pallet bed, and stool. One person can build a shack with simple tools and basic materials. For an additional 1 point of Goods and 2 points of Labor, you can construct a brick or stone hut instead of a wooden shack.
This room is described as occupying up to 4 squares; a 10x10 room. This per the quote above gives you nothing more than a survival shelter with simple furnishings.
My question is: can it be something else?
What if I'm a poor, first level adventurer but my GM lets me have a shack in my starting gear. Can I add a kitchen to it and say that it is a simple dining area where I can serve guests during Downtime? A shack could only accommodate, maybe a single table of 6 folks, but then I could use that and the kitchen to generate revenue from the Kitchen room bonus of GP +4. My PC then has a shallow loft space where he can sleep above the "common room" shack area.
My thought was that the shack then would simply represent a modest 10x10 room that can double as whatever basic utility you need, it just wouldn't give any bonuses. You COULD use it to double as a cell for example, but it's not nearly as secure as an actual Cell room, or you could throw in a couple extra stools and use it as a sitting room but visitors would not be impressed with it so no Influence +4 bonus.
Is this possible?
I don't think you could add anything to it for free; it is quite clear on what is in the shack. You'd probably have to spend additional... something... to add a basic kitchen. Of course, back in those days, the 'kitchen' was a fire pit out front, or even in the center of the shack with a hole in the ceiling for some smoke to eventually exit.
I actually have no idea how Ultimate Campaign does stuff, just basing my answer off the words you quoted; specifically "... contains a simple table, pallet bed, and stool".
I agree with Mathius. If you want the mechanical functionality of a kitchen, you need to buy a kitchen. But reskinning the shack as any reasonable room that provides no bonuses to checks is fair.
As a GM, I would probably apply a -2 penalty to earnings checks for every purpose you put the room to after the first (so if you sleep in the loft, as well as using the room as a cheap fast food joint, for example, rather than paying for a bedroom upstairs).
I just thought of a viking-style feast hall. It's rustic, earthy, and has pallets built into the walls for sleeping/sitting on during a meal. If shabby and barely adequate, it's a couple of shacks that provide no earnings bonuses. However if well constructed the same space in the same style would provide all the bonuses of a Kitchen and Common Room from the UC book. Also sleeping on the floor or bench of a common room in a tavern was common in real life wasn't it?
Anyway the reason I'm asking all of this is I wanted to run a game based around PCs settling in a frontier town and using it as a base from which to adventure. In order to stead the PCs in the town invest the characters in the settlement I was going to start each PC with a free shack. They can then describe their home as whatever they want it to look like and can spend any starting or future gold on developing that structure or building off of it.
As I began contemplating this start to a game I realized that if they wanted to PCs could build their shacks together to make a crude hall of sorts, then use starting gold (I use 150 GP per PC) and their own hard work to earn Capital enough to turn around and spend on cheap rooms like an Office, a Kitchen or a Garden.
In short, they might actually begin the game with a business if they could use their shack to help facilitate it.
I'm not saying that this is an optimized choice or that any of my players would choose this option, but I wanted to be prepared with a ruling if the situation arose.
Well sure, you are the GM, you can just make it happen.
You could just say that the shack could be used as a kitchen but then it cannot be used for sleeping. That way, if four PCs put their shacks together, you could have a 200 square feet of living, 100 for sleeping, and 100 for cooking (fire pits, counter space, food preparation, disposal, etc... which can add up to a fair amount of floor space but can easily feed four or maybe more people). Otherwise, they are cooking at the camp fire outside (which is also fine; they could easily build a rain cover with some craft (woodworking) checks or something.
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I always thought the shack's intended use was simply to be "a little, old place where PC's can 'get together.'"
Well, now, if you're the GM, that puts a slightly different perspective on things.
If you want them to start with a common room, kitchen, and storage, do it! By the time they're 4th level, the boost in wealth won't mean anything, and it will help the story.
This is one of those times when Rule Zero is totally worth it.
15 miles away from town, down a not-so-well-used road, is kind of inconvenient for a headquarters, unless the PCs are villains.
I dunno. If I had folks lining up outside just to get down, I'd consider moving. Did they all walk 15 to get to the shack?