The Quintessential Empire Village

Michael Stockin

Michael Stockin

Lord
Is there such a thing?

I am at the stage now with my Heiligsheld project that I want to start on the village proper.
But what buildings and how it should be laid out.

I want a tavern and stables.
Several houses.
A couple of shoppes.
Etc etc.

But I am struggling to pin down a design, is it based around a market square, the village well, a green, something else?
It is long and thin, roundy round, etc.

I have been looking at my old books like The Riding, Lichemaster, Death on the Reik, WFRP etc and so on but nothing instantly calls out and says COPY ME!!

So what villages layouts from the worhamms have you always liked?
Have you done a village yourself and what was it like?

Should I just copy an historical village and swap in Townscape buildings?
Talking of which I am a bit reluctant to make it too urban, some of the townscape models look a bit too fancy.

Hit me with ideas and examples my good peoples!!

TIA
 
Might I suggest for the basic layouts and ideas.. there are many a good old RPG video game, or the like, with sometimes limited but also full of ideas layouts? or sometimes, some TV show or films.

Though I'm trying to think of some of the top of my head which would be idea..
 
What about something like 'Shoodthorpe', the Riding, from Blood on the Streets? Swap out a market sq for a village green/stock keeping (for market day, games, fayre etc...). They all had walled buildings and grazing land around them anyway. Remember there was an illustration /birds eye view of each the villages with description and npcs. Been some years since I've seen it!
 
It is on my reading stand and it is, or rather was, the number #1 contender.

But then, on the way back from collecting my daughter just now, we stopped at the McDriveThru and in a burst of sugary salty goodness the solution struck me!!
 
Afraid I was always quite reality driven with my locations despite this fantastical image I have of the Old World in my head thanks to Mr Miller. So physically what's the location, why is the village there is the first question. Is it on a route between places, in which case it is liable to be a coaching village, built up around an Inn. Is it at a crossroads? Is it near a natural resource and has grown out of a mining (etc) town. Those kind of things start to give shape. Is there a river, what route do the animals take down to the river. Things like that start to shape the streets. Land owners stake out claims to land. Someone sells a field and some houses are built on that, etc. Does it have a stockade or anything. Did it in th e past? How has that shaped the town/village. Did fire destroy something and it was rebuilt? Anyhow I like to try to grow my towns like that. I think it was a direct reaction to some of the almost grid like layouts you'd sometimes see in D&D adventures!
 
I am firstly annoyed that I did not follow my normal procedure by asking why.
Why is the village there, how did it start?

Then it hit me.
The farm has been there for ages as farms often are, and it sits near the river on a trade route.
As such there is a coaching inn.
Over time as the inn did well a blacksmith set up shop to re-shoe the horses, mend coach wheels, even sell simple tools and what not to guests at the inn.

The inn was getting food from the nearby farm but they needed more, a bakers popped up near the blacksmith.
Then slowly but surely it grew into the village it is today.

I will start with the "Stocks Inn", then make the smithy, then the bakery and then see what I think happened next.

EDIT: Ha Ha, pretty much what you said Eric, your post appeared as I was typing this.
Great minds.
 
I was going to say figure out why the village is there and work from there, but you beat me to it.
Just a thought that could give some day to day life, as well as the smithy, every village had a pound, a small walled enclosure where wandering livestock were locked up until collected, and usually a fine paid. It'd be next to the green/common normally, and often had a small lock up for any human miscreants too. Might be something simple that could give flavour?
 
Looking at the WFRP1 village plan, the thing that strikes me is that the wall is unfeasibly long and indefensible. Apart from the huge amount of resources to build it, you need at least one able defender for every 6ft of wall (I may have gone far beyond healthy levels of interest with my zombie apocalypse planning as a teen. Young adult. Well still doing it really 🤣). You'd need hundreds of people in that village for that wall to make sense.

A village in a safe(ish) area would maybe have a stockade around a strong building/watch tower like a Broch or church or, if it was in a really dangerous area with regular raids you might have the village style where the houses were arranged to form a ring with thick exterior walls with no windows, and the gaps between them walled up apart from a narrow gate. Sorry, I've gone on a ramble again!

For modelling it I'd be tempted just to model the bit around the village green, where all the action is. The outer farms could just be implied or used as gaming table centre pieces, like the fantastic farm you've already made?
 
The Serene Badger said:
like the fantastic farm you've already made?
Click to expand...

Flattery sir, you flatter me.


The Serene Badger said:
I may have gone far beyond healthy levels of interest with my zombie apocalypse planning as a teen. Young adult. Well still doing it really
Click to expand...

Same.


I will do the inn, the adjacent buildings and then have a think and see where the green/marketplace/ etc would logically spring up.
I guess organic growth makes sense.


With regards the village, while the wall is looong, it is only a rough stone wall.
I wonder if it is more about keeping any livestock in rather than baddies out?
I know it says delaying bandits though?

What is more of interest to me is that the village is called Kleindorf and that is featured in a Gotrek and Felix story...
 
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Michael Stockin said:
With regards the village, while the wall is looong, it is only a rough stone wall.
I wonder if it is more about keeping any livestock in rather than baddies out?
I know it says delaying bandits though?
Click to expand...
That's a whole lot of effort and resource to cut and place that stone just to keep stock in. Might make sense If the village rose up because there were good quarries there, they could use the off cuts from dressing stone blocks. If I recall correctly your descriptions made it sound like a forested area, so wooden pallisades could be appropriate.
I can tell I've got reports to write, my brain is taking me far too far down any tangent it can trying to rationalise the architecture of fantasy made up people to avoid doing the work 🤣
 
I doubt a 'Plough Stone Wall' would be cut or dressed in any meaningful way. I'm thinking dry stone walls like we have in The Cotswolds using the stones that the Farmer Palmers have uncovered while tending their fields. Such a wall combined with a ditch and angry locals would allow some defence against raiders.

I agree that a palisade around a much more compact village is most likely in the heavily forested Empire. The odd blockhouse here & there could make sense too. Outlying defensible farms with thick walls and sturdy gates built around courtyards too.
 
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