the usual suspects of a small society

[ludzik]

Lets picture a small village / town. There are some characters in that settings that are common across the board. The usual suspects that I have on the list so far are

• - lord
  - lady
  - daughter(s) and or son(s)
  - household servants
  • -cupbearer (or steward or someone similar in title/office)
    -captain of the guard
    -master-at-arms (could be one and the same with the above/depending on the size of the household)
    -maid(s)
    -kitchen staff
  -household guard/soldiers (could be same or could be different groups)
  • -guards
    -soldiers
  -blacksmith
  -armorer (could be same as blacksmith)
  -apothecary/healer
  -religious figure of sorts (could be same as healer)
  -tavern folks
  -peasants

So who am I missing? I'm trying to gather my cast of characters

[AK_Brickster]

Bard / Minstrel
Town Drunkard / Wenches (maybe fits under "tavern folks")
Baker
Gong farmer

[Tower of Iron Will]

Money lenders
Tax Collectors (publicans)
Merchants

[theboywarrior]

Hmm, probably:


-A town committee, if it's a large enough town, like advisors to the lord
-A town crier
-A Bailiff if it's a manorial town
-A Reeve, also if it's a manorial town

[jrbaker]

This small town is sounding pretty big!

Farm/field workers would definitely be important.

Gong farmers? Criminals (in the stocks)? Innkeeper? Travelling performers? Pilgrims?

[ludzik]

Thanks everyone - all good ideas

So thinking out loud - I'm definitely going for small society for now. It'll be all centered around the keep and the way I see it

• - farmers will be loosely spread out throughout the countryside so they would not part of the "village" per se
  - Inn (with staff) - good catch. At first I wasn't thinking about putting one there BUT with soldiers/guards in the keep, they gotta drink someplace
  - Gong farmers - maybe he'll be the stable boy that pulls double duty (trying to keep the group small )
  - Bailif - hmmmm that I think would be for a bigger town? I know... I didn't give much to explain the size (the concept is still rattling in my brain maturing )
  - Minstrel and wenches will fit into Inn staff Well the minstrel could be a traveling one too

Thank's everyone

[Aeridian]

No carpenter/woodcutter? Or cobbler, a miller, a fletcher, a tanner, a tailor and possibly a scribe? This might be a few too many though...

[ludzik]

No carpenter/woodcutter? Or cobbler, a miller, a fletcher, a tanner, a tailor and possibly a scribe? This might be a few too many though...

They're in the next town over I'm trying to strike a balance with what I can start with and what makes sense I think that in my town they hire a fair amount of passing labor and trade for goods with the surrounding towns

[AK_Brickster]

This sounds fun! Someday when I have a dedicated Lego room, one of my big goals is to start a modular semi-permanent layout that I can continue to add to over time. It would have a big castle, town, outlaying farms and quarries, etc. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 x 4 64 stud plates in size.

That's all a long-ways off though

[ludzik]

This sounds fun! Someday when I have a dedicated Lego room, one of my big goals is to start a modular semi-permanent layout that I can continue to add to over time. It would have a big castle, town, outlaying farms and quarries, etc. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 x 4 64 stud plates in size.

That's all a long-ways off though

I hear ya My approach right now is that I want to gather up the necessary figs, build them standalone buildings/shops and also finish building my keep one of these days. Now while I don't have the room to display all of it at once, I could work on getting them modularized so that I could put them together at some point.

So far I have
lord, lady, daughter, (maybe) son, stewart, 1 female servant, 1 male servant, captain of the guard, household guard (all 13 of them), soldiers (all 15 of them), blacksmith, apothecary/healer, peasant.

Now this might sounds like a short list and one that could be easily filled, but it's harder to do it with fleshies as quite a few of female torsos that I have are not usable.

Also I already see a problem: my guards and knights total 40 and I think my keep that is about 54 x 40 at its base is not going to be big enough to house them :/

[AK_Brickster]

Easy solution: Build a barracks outside of the keep. Or have some of them marching on patrol elsewhere in the layout

[ludzik]

Easy solution: Build a barracks outside of the keep. Or have some of them marching on patrol elsewhere in the layout

That is something I have considered (barracks). The marching solution won't work as every soldier needs a bunk

[AK_Brickster]

Actually, only half of them need bunks, seems that it would be reasonable that they'd sleep in shifts, right?
(Hey, sometimes you have to get creative to make everything fit!)

[Lil_Curt]

I am with AK technically you only need enough barracks to house 1/3-1/2 of your army at any given time. It all depends on shift rotation. If you do 8 hour shifts, then you in theory have 1/3rd your army sleeping at a time(3 shifts). where as a 2 shift system. every 12 hours, you would have half your army in sleeping at any given time. this is why in the armed forces they can get away with setting up half or less of what is needed at any given time, in mobile camps for infantry. now mind you officers are another story, most of the time they have there individual tents, or bunks an rarely are they shared. When it comes to infantry they just have individual foot lockers assigned, and most share a bunk.

curt

[ludzik]

Hmmm good point - I think I'll split them up into the "keep" duty crew that will have half bunks inside and then I'll have barracks in town for the rest of them