Towns - Communities

This thread explains everything you need to know about starting a town in HollowWorld and the NPCs that might dwell there.

HOW DO I START A TOWN?

If you want to build anything other than a campfire and a few tents, you need to start what we call ‘a community’. A community is defined as a place where your character lives. That’s all. Hence, it can be anything from a village to a nomadic caravan or even a flying castle. Your imagination is the only limit of what kind of place your community will be! 

‘Community’ is the overarching term for your spot on the map and consists of the Buildings, the Player Characters, Institutions, and the Non-Player Characters. Out of this list, institutions and NPCs are the only elements with defined mechanics. The rest is nearly entirely free for you to imagine in whatever way you’d like to envision it.

BUILDINGS

Buildings in your community cost no goodwill points, but must have a function and must make sense. This means every house in town must have a player or NPC occupant and buildings that do not qualify as ‘home’ must have some other IC use - even if that use is just to impress others or the like.

We call these “vanity projects,” and they have no set mechanics except that the more Wealth and Ages invested into them (at your discretion) the more impressive they are. You can build a coliseum with golden pillars if you want, but if you invest no Wealth into it,the pillars are in fact just painted gold from an IC perspective.

PLAYER CHARACTERS

Your community is supposed to be a place where your character can live with other players. We encourage you to come together and join each other’s communities and work towards your combined goals and futures together. 

INSTITUTIONS

All communities start with an institution. It is a place that gives the community a benefit, effect, and/or a yield. This may vary from ironworks that allow citizens to mine and process metals to a magic university that gives community members the ability to learn spells. Again, your imagination is the only limiting factor here.

Every institution must always be tiered. It starts small; the absolute minimum to still be able to function in the way it should. The next tiers - however many you would like - upgrade your institution one step at a time. You must keep track of what institutions you have and what tier they’re at on your community thread in the communities section on the forums.

Before setting up a new community and/or institution, get in touch with a Staff DM to sign off on it.

NON PLAYER CHARACTERS

Besides real players, your town is populated with NPCs. You can use them as much or as little as you like, but keep in mind that they’re supposed to be actual people with feelings, wants and dreams. Player characters may interact with them and a DM may elect to do stuff with those NPCs.

NPCs are representative of the institutions within their community. If you have a magic university institution, you’ll have wizards wandering the streets. If you have a barracks institution, there’ll be soldiers manning your walls. In fact, the point of having a barracks may very well be so that you have these soldiers to fight your wars for you!

You can use these NPCs to do stuff. You can go to war with your NPC soldiers. You can use NPC mages to make contributions to rituals. You can even, DM permitting, bring them with you to events and play a character that orders their NPCs around instead of engaging in the event directly. 

In fact, they are so real, that even their death has consequences! If all your townsfolk die, you can’t use the institution they worked at anymore. When this happens, you may attempt to acquire new NPCs through logical steps IC, or allow an age [see thread] to pass such that a new generation of apprentices take over from their masters, a new generation of children take up the duties of their parents. For more information on ages, see [This Thread].

Mechanically, a PC isn’t necessarily stronger than an NPC - a master mage NPC, for example, could be expected to stand toe to toe with a master mage PC if all else is equal. However, remember that an NPC is a shared character with the DM and may do things that aren’t in your interests.

FOLLOWERS

Followers are defined as those that are your character’s immediate underling. Every institution has one Follower figure, the one that runs the place. You may also acquire a Follower from events, when an NPC decides to follow your character.

You can have more than one Follower, play them at the same time as your main character by using armor stands or wool blocks to indicate their position, or even play them in place of your main character as if they were your alt! They give you opportunities for unique stories you could explore, such as a betrayal from your trusted Follower.

All GW acquired by your Followers is halved and then given to your main character.