Authentic World Building — Generating Settlements

Settlements are important parts of world building in any campaign setting. In this article, I'll set out some of the roll tables I use that I think help create authentic feeling settlements. This list of roll tables are mostly applicable to a setting based in medieval Europe; there aren't any fantasy elements here. I think adding fantasy elements to your world building is the easy bit — it's filling in the mundane details that these roll tables can help with.

Settlement Size

The first step is determining the size of your settlement. You can roll for it, or pick one from the list. The bonus die will come in useful later for weighting the results from future rolls.

Defenses

Many settlements have some kind of defense. Roll on this table to determine the defenses. Use the bonus dice from the settlement size table when rolling. Each row in the table would generally also have the defenses from the previous row.

Prominent Locations

Roll on this table to determine what prominent locations are in the settlement. Roll as many times as you think is necessary to generate interesting locations in your settlement.

* Roll on the Artisans Shop table to determine what kind of artisans shop it is.

Artisans Shop

Taverns

Settlements would often have many taverns or inns. It is unreasonable to create more than a couple for larger settlements even though in reality they may have hundreds. Use the table below to determine how many taverns a settlement should have.

Condition of Tavern

Roll on the condition of the tavern to determine how much it charges customers. Use the bonus die in the tavern building table.

Tavern Building

Use this table with the bonus die from the condition table to determine what building a tavern occupies.

Tavern name

Use this table to determine the name structure of your tavern.