Settler problems

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

when I run out of pictures of villages I'll start posting pictures of approximate tech-level structures...

...

Good idea!

Forest fire
Nomads come along and like your stuff more than they like you.
You offended some spirit/minute good by selling there and now all your account are born with 2-4 heads and die soon after birth.
There is lead in the river water.
Parasites.
The young men get "recruited" for war.

perhaps its a good settlement for the silk trade?

...

there could be...

flooding
rock slides
earthquakes...

...

...

>You offended some spirit/minute good by selling there and now all your account are born with 2-4 heads and die soon after birth.
Jesus, what the hell.
You offended some minor deity your spirit by settling there and now all your newborn animals are freaks that die soon after birth.

something comes at night and steals newborns

>indigenous peoples are angry
The solution is clear.

You can establish commerce with the natives. This becomes a source of info on local medicinal herbs, appropriate water sources, eldritch tombs to be avoided. In turn, you provide them with, say, steel axe heads or glass mirrors. Colonists and tribals might even have parties and go to war together.

On the other hand, have you checked if your gods can actually influence things in your new region? They might have geographical limits. One might need to worship new local gods.

You can also find out your colony was meant to fail due to intrigue and exiled rival aristocrats. So the lateness of supply ships is intentional.

An internal conflict between the colonists might result into a new village nearby.

Possible sources of wealth for the settlers: furs, timber, salted fish, export crops like sugarcane.

Oh yes, try to play "King of the Dragon Pass".

I won't dip too far into that in my game.

players are just the designated protectors of the colony. I wont intend for them to govern, but I will have things going on in and around the place that will need their attention.

they will be expected to help out in a flood, or protect farmers from natives and wild animals sort of thing.

now, if they pick up a trade or become patrons of craft they might dip more into those particulars.

still, all solid ideas.

never played, how is it?

hard to do with a party of 4 versus a tribe of possibly hundreds

oh definitely

Syphilitic madness

only if the governors manage to come to peace with the natives

a cleric will see to it that all the people that go out to the colony are clean...when they start...

...

...

...

I wonder what creepy/odd stuff could go on out that far from people...I don't want to run FULL HORROR but a little light horror might be interesting

...

paraphrased ideas from *1372 roadside encounters*

>a local canyon contains a bog filled with toxic, flammable gas.

>A small group of kneeling, lifelike statues, frozen in fear or supplication are found. they are all facing the same direction.

>Partial eclipse of the sun. villagers declare it an ill omen.

>a group of villagers has taken to tipping outhouses.

>an angry group of villagers tries to lynch a party member

>A spreading sinkhole is destroying the structures and making nearby terrain precarious.

>A well-spoken bugbear wearing fine studded leather armour is trapped under a
fallen tree. He implores the party to come to his aid.

>The village starts finding neatly severed body parts discarded in the square. An ear,
then a finger, then a tongue. nobody reports missing these parts.

>gambling in the town leads to a proto-kingpin

>Cloying, wet mist makes fires difficult to start, papers soggy, bows unreliable,
sword handles slippery. It also puts everyone in a sour mood.

[autistic screeching]

Worse: ergot in your wheat.

now the next thought
WHAT WOULD A COLONY GROUP BRING IN TERMS OF TOOLS AND SUPPLIES?

assuming 150-200 persons.

there would need to be tools.
how much/what would be assigned to farmers?
how much breeding livestock?
what for the smiths?
woodcutters/millwrights?
surveyors?
carpenters?(I'm gonna set it close to a body of water so maybe shiprights?)
masons?
tanners?

???
is it really THAT badly laid out?

oooh I LIKE that...
what are the symptoms of ergot? hallucinations, paranoia, what else?
going full-salem might be fun

Nothing in that picture makes sense. Like, pic related, why? What would ever be a reason?
The "village" is actually a sizeable town with TWO MILLS and a goddamn fountain. Do you have any idea how expensive fountains were?

>2 mills
a grind mill and a wood mill?

>fountain
some rich fuck wanted one?

>pic related
appears to be a cartwright shop

not saying it isnt retardo, but it might still be functional...

ALL RIGHTY THIS IS HOW I THINK I'LL START
(players each build {1 level 5} character(PC), and either {5 level 1} or {3 level 2} characters(follower NPCs)(no wizards)

you are [adventurer] and [adventurer] having gained some fair renown for your exploits you were offered the job of serving a proposed colony effort in an unexplored land. your primary concerns are as security leadership, peace keeping, and general Troubleshooting. you have been allowed to select assistants for this end-goal. the colony has a governor and a handfull of aides assigned, and technically they are in charge of the colony and its inhabitants(aside from your chosen assistants and any colonist conscripts).

>the party, the appointed governor, and their aides attend this briefing.
travel will consist of our company wizard opening a temporary portal to a linked traveling mage who discovered the location. until the masons accompanying you finish constructing the Permanent Arrival Pad you must keep the traveling mage alive as he is vital to opening the portals. in the event that he dies before activating the pad you will be stranded and out of communication until we can get another traveling mage to you the long way. he intends to retire to a nearby mountain peak should your pad break.

area is reported as uninhabited, heavily forested, mountain foothills, near a very large freshwater lake. according to the assayer and surveying team with the wizard there is a fairly significant amount of arable land. apparently they found a very good location and have set to clearing it for construction.

>cont
...
>transit happens without a hitch
>word comes back 2 days later that one of the governors aides is wanted for treason/murder/jaywalking
>the next morning the aide is gone, as is his young wife, and their horses.
>the travel-mage is dead, and his apprentices are dead and critically wounded respectively.
>the settlement has 5 "emergency messages" they can send. no more than 1 page of text each that will return to the companies "receiver" scribe.
>there is no way for them to receive messages
>welcome to the forest

...

>SUPRISE mineral wealth

Great for a city or country, not actually that good for a settlement.

Depending on the fertility of the land etc, in Generic Fantasy Europe it takes nine peasants working to make about enough food for ten people. That means for every nine peasants, you can have one non-peasant specialist doing something else.

So if you find mineral wealth, every person mining won't be doing other tasks that need doing.

Now you can solve this problem by purchasing food elsewhere with the proceeds of the mine, but that'll let other people know you have mineral wealth and they're quite likely to be assholes - look for example at what happened in the Klondike gold rush, that place was a shithole to live in because "fifteen miners for every saloon wench" is a terrible fucking demographic catastrophe. Even if you don't get a lot of raping, you do get a lot of very frustrated miners who are very angry that all their gold still leaves them TFWnoGF because somebody else has even more gold and there just aren't that many girls to go around.

The local forest/spring/hill spirits are happy/chill/mad about new people showing up

Forest/steppe fire depending on terrain

The weather is wetter/drier than is optimal for the seeds you brought

The travelling merchant you told about your new settlement dies or for some other reason doesn't make it part of his route

The travelling merchant *does* make it part of his route and in fact it turns out you're very conveniently located as a mid-trip watering hole between two otherwise-isolated areas so you can expect a lot of trade to start passing through.

Somebody saw or did not see goblins/kobolds/whatever to the north/south/east/west so we probably need to get working on the palisades faster than we planned. Can we do both that and get the harvest in?

Local animals provide exceedingly fine fur so you have nice trade goods

Fucking nothing provides anything so you are the most generic village on earth, the only thing you can trade to passing merchants is food and rest before they move on.

One problem that could specifically affect a new settlement would be being abandoned/forgotten by those at "home" - it's less an issue if they were expecting to be independent, but if they were planning on having communication, trade and additional settlers and materials coming from their home nation, a far-off decision to leave them be, or to stop sponsoring colonists, might be devastating - not just in a practical sense, but also very demoralising.

99% of really serious events in smaller societies such as villages and settlements were actually clan feuds over land, husbands/wifes and marriage compensations, and matters of fame/infamy. It's incredibly sad how people seem to entirely forget that those used to matter.

Things like:
A daughter of one family marries a son and another. After few weeks/months, the daughter runs away claiming the husband is abusive/smells bad/snores. Que a feud about how to solve this and what kind of compensation should come from that.
Or: One farmer collects a water from a spring not far from his field.
Another farmer claims that spring and thus water actually belongs to his lands. Cue lenghtly and occasionally bloody feud that might drag on for generations.
OR one guy claims another guy is a cuck while they are both in pub. The other guy beats him senseless few days later. Cue a long-lasting conflict for honor that can divide the entire community.
Or one guy brings home a corpse of a dog, claims that he had hunted it.
Another guy claims to have seen the exact same dog lying dead in the forest a day later, it was apparently dead by natural causes.
Cue a massive infamy accusation, social ostracization etc...

>went to bed with not much
>woke up to a small thesis
fantastic.
bumping to read this in a bit.

In native society, it is customary for young men with no wife to leave home and Only return with adult Children, if at all. The colony is surprised but delighted of the few native men joining them, although the colonies scarcity of women is becoming a problem.

Actually, this has not historically happened that often. Not that history and reality are always all that important in fantasy scenarios, but young men leaving the village has only became a common phenomenon in modern era West (occasionally it happened in late middle ages, but not very frequently, and the men usually did not come back home - they left to colonize a new region and establish new homestead) - or it did happen in polygynic societies, where the problem of female scarcity was generally greater.
Otherwise, male line usually remained home (we call this patrilocality), they were usually the ones who provided "space to live in", while it was the women who moved around, left their homes and occasionally returned back home to take care of their parents after they raised their children.

>9 farmers to 1 non farmer
is this mitigated at all by either very good fishing, or very good hunting, or very good forage?
I might tweak it down to 5-6 to 4...

>TFW no GF
starting out with a better spread on gender, not quite but close to 1:1
this colony was going to be the "establishment force" to get the area ready and begin preliminary work on several projects.

>One problem that could specifically affect a new settlement would be being abandoned/forgotten by those at "home" - it's less an issue if they were expecting to be independent, but if they were planning on having communication, trade and additional settlers and materials coming from their home nation, a far-off decision to leave them be, or to stop sponsoring colonists, might be devastating - not just in a practical sense, but also very demoralising.
see and not abandoned or forgotten. but very cut off.

looks good deff gonna use some of this or make notes at least.

>feudin'
sounds more flavourful, but the party IS gonna be peace-keepers so there is that as a flavourful addition.

>a suprising mini-lecture on...what would this topic be called??
anyway, this is interesting enough to make it in maybe...
D&D type fantasy might mean this could be some flavour of humanoid race different enough to make it interesting.

especially if I combine this with feuding over available poontang, racists, etc...

>sounds more flavourful, but the party IS gonna be peace-keepers so there is that as a flavourful addition.
Actually internal feuds in societies are pretty good plot-hooks especially if the players themselves found in the area either on some kind of official business (send there by a governor) or have some kind of natural authority (one of them is a mage/priest etc...). Since these kinds of local feuds often can drag on for ages and result into generations of hostilities, many of these small societies would turn to outsiders (as long as they were people with some kind of authority) to help them resolve them. A small trial-esque adventure where player are trying to gather as much evidence, and hold a public trial trying to at the same time appease the locals and offer some kind of fair solution can always make a welcomed alternative to murder-quests. Plus, what starts like a seemingly banal local feud can grow into rather interesting proportion and link into another series of quests and challenges.

>D&D type fantasy might mean this could be some flavour of humanoid race different enough to make it interesting.
As I said: pretty much any form of polygyny basically forces this kind of situation, because the local wealthy guys basically "buy out" all the available local girls ready for marriage, literally forcing the young boys to leave the place and seek their wives elsewhere. Might become particularly funny if you focus on the problem of locals "these assholes are coming from their fucked up societies and keep dragging our daughters away" type of story - you could both go the comedy route, as well as the more traditional damsel in distress "solving the case of kidnapped local girls" scenario.

...

>many of these small societies would turn to outsiders... to help them resolve them.

not likely, in 14th century England people were generally paranoid and fearful of "strangers" people that were not from the local community, now charity and hospitality were virtues that people stressed over so as travelers, the party you wouldn't be immediately turned away when they seek lodging and/or goods and services, but since the locals don't know if they are robbers, bandits, murderers, or rapists, they well likely suspect them of being all of the above. Incidentally if anything bad happens in the community during their stay, the locals will IMMEDIATELY suspect the party of being involved, if not directly responsible, when that happens the PCs better be ready to start saying where they come from so that the people of their hometowns can speak as character witnesses for them, and god help the PC who's player wrote some tragic backstory that involved the destruction of the PC's home town.

Im basing it on animals like deer boar wolves etc, not humans

Yes, that is where the state of "authority comes from". Being send out by an official, or being part of a recognizable institution of authority (such as priesthood or other scholarly group) played a major role. Which - at least in the way I tend to shepherd my groups, is almost always the case: even "adventurers" in my campaign usually either travel on some kind of official blessing, or at least one of the members of the group is part of some respectable institution - a wiseman (sage, wizard, traveling priest).
The guidance of an external authority has always been quite desperately sought out. It's how Taliban established it's influence in middle east, it's what wandering priests or employees of the magistrated were for in historical Japan, in Europe it is what visiting priests, knights and noblemen, as well as local governers used to do.
Sure, if your group is a bunch of literal murderhobos and nobodies, people would regard them with serious mistrust, but the reality is that in most campaigns, even if the GM does not recognize it, there is usually at least single character that should have a role of public authority. Again: priest, wizard, monk, paladin, you name it.

Does not change a thing, really. Even if you have them vaguely animal-like characteristics, they are going to be based 90% off some particular human characteristic, custom or culture.

Theres definitely been weirder cultural deviations than a society with less available women compared to the bachelor population.

Depends on the surrounding geography. Mountains? The pass gets closed up, stuck for winter, with no communication. Plains? Tornado season picks up. Or maybe a dust-bowl. There are reports, from early in the colonization of the plains, of swarms of birds and locusts miles long. Costal? Flash-floods caused by not respecting an angry spirit. I’d throw in some “Indian Burial Ground” type stuff.

One of my earliest campaigns was actually something pretty close to this. Ask if you want details.

The original society that sent you out all dies off of plague or something, and you’re the only ones left who have a history of your civilization.

>is this mitigated at all by either very good fishing, or very good hunting, or very good forage?
>I might tweak it down to 5-6 to 4...

Yes absolutely. It is also mitigated by, you know, magic. If a magic forge lets a smith be twice as productive, he can spend half his time farming and only need half as much food from other villagers. A priest might count as ten peasants all on his own if he can reliably get the blessing of a fertility deity on the crops.

ah, but the PCs are of small renown as not-shitty individuals. still, the paranoia might be fun in the game as I have built it.
>thousands of miles from home
literally EVERYTHING will be the target of paranoia.
just one doppleganger will make literally EVERYONE FEAR EVERYTHING

the party is appointed by the backers of the colony effort. and as written they ARE the authority, second only to the governor so unlike most games they are some of the only people the villagers CAN trust. it'll be fun running with that...

>Ask if you want details.
you don't know me, but I ALWAYS want details

I want to be pretty low magic.
BUT
I might send them with an artificer or two to maintain and construct things like trip-hammers for smiths, McCormick Harvester(s) for cereal farmers, mills for grain and wood, seed drills, etc.

no steampunk, nothing self-powered, nothing you can only make with heavy industry. little crutches to a village that heavily improve the output of farmers.

cause to me, those are what allowed significant fractions of previously agricultural people to change career to other crafts or skills. but then I always think of tech as being the answer.

Somebody post one of those "best threads on Veeky Forums" images, because I think we need it.

its turning pretty good, but its probably not the best

Veal is pretty tasty

...

It's worth noting due to the seasonal nature of the work, being a farmer need not be one's only economic activity.

live-stock isn't so seasonal though, its relatively constant.

This. This is more Chinese history, but late-Ming farmers would work in the cities in the off-season. Sometimes nobles would even farm for extra security and income.

Bump

That mindest works for one year, then you notice that to keep your breeding stock, you actually need to breed animals into adulthood.
Also do oyu think that anybody will buy your cursed cow ?

>BAD
Due to the greed and laziness of the settlement's founders it is built on an ancient burial ground dedicated to the remains of human sacrifices. The next viable location for a settlement is too far away for moving to be an option with out abandoning almost everything to the angry dead.

Except thats the name of the native tribe that the settlers joined when they realized they sucked at being settlers and is in no way a spooky mystery.

The entire town is tittycrotch lactose intolerant.

>recruited for war

Thats a fun idea. The far away ruler(s) have decided that even your far flung dirt heap has to give up some fodder for his aggressive political fuckeries. Press gangs made up of hard-eyed, cruel men begin drifting into town from time to time, taking more and more of the capable men(and women, I don't care how your fictional land deals with sexism and shit) off to die in nameless lands.

But women make new soldiers, that war has to go pretty fucking bad.

Eh, there's always other women, just don't take too many and try and take any that already have had kids.

Bump

OKAY NEXT THOUGHT
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
this being D&D or a similar game set at the juncture of a massive lake, mountains, and deep deep forests it makes sense that there should be at least 2 races at war if not a 3rd aquatic one too, and they all are in competition for resources.

I like the idea of reasonably friendly sahuagin in the deeper parts of the lake, then maybe a very few gnolls in the forest and lots of kobolds deep in the mountains.

>apothecary
>widower living alone on the far edge of the village
>starts disappearing for longer and longer times into the forest collecting herbs
>people start to notice things
>the frail old woman has a fully stocked woodpile.
>she seems to hunt so well her larder is always full, cataracts and all.

This art is really comfy

yeah, this is a game I want to be a little comfy once it sets out and gets going.

>Strange noises come from the ground.

>A cattle stampede

>A roc has roosted nearby. PCs witness it taking cattle

>A dryad weeps in a meadow.

>A sudden snow storm blankets the colony without warning

>You stumble upon an old scroll case wedged between a tangle of tree branches. Inside is a village's charter of rights and freedoms.

>prostitutes

>Sickly green foam flows down a nearby hillside, dissolving
everything organic in its path.

I mean being outnumbered 4 to some hundreds worked out for the spanish: get native allies who are angry with the angry natives.

One small team of men can take a country if they make the right allies and pull the right strings with the locals.

>Crashing branches and undergrowth ahead stop suddenly as a young child bursts out in front of you. He looks wildly in your direction and pleads, "Help me please they're coming!"

>A huge, magical, glowing rock sits in the path. It hums louder when approached...

>The warm rain that never seems to stop threatens the quality of goods

>A dead lion lays in the forest, the victim of a swarm of wasps.

>A single stone has been recently erected in the center of the village by unknown persons

>You awake to find everything you own has been removed during the night. Fearing theft, a quick search reveals sets of tracks, lying in the middle of your campsite, a smoldering pouch of herbs that, when you sniff them, make you feel slightly drowsy.(adjust for thieving local peoples)

>A trans-dimensional tinker.

>a patch of forest like this scp-wiki.net/scp-143 (but possibly with pine needles instead of cherry-blossom petals)
>what other SCPs would be fine as encounters in a game of D&D?

well, I intend for there to be 3 different kinds of natives that dislike eachother a little in a 3-way conflict over the

t. spooc

>farmhouse on fire.

>A man or creature falls from the sky.

>in certain areas the tops of the trees have been drawn and woven together forming nearly rain-proof thickets of branch, vine, and leaf

>whispers in the forest, whispers not everyone hears.

>a tree is found with its branches hung with chimes, bells, or rattles.

>#440

>Island village

...

An Echo, Resounding has good systems for this kind of thing.

Man that’s a good and bad.

The spiders are poisonous and aggressive.
The silk is incredibly valuable and can be traded easily and readily with just about any trader.

Where is it?

catsplosion

I think that pic is from norway/sweeden

It's Innerdalen in Norway