Settlements

Settlements are the blanket term for any collection of buildings where groups of people of various sizes live. This can run the gamut from tiny villages containing a half dozen people to large cities containing thousands.

Pending Questions

 * Do we want to allow players to found “settlements”?
 * Varying sizes? Village, town, city, kingdom, etc?
 * Are players in charge of them or owners of them?
 * Are those people elected by residents, or does it just fall upon whoever “founded” the settlement?
 * Do we want leadership positions like that to have associated skills that can be leveled? Or more like just permissions to do things that are granted by the position? I’m leaning towards the latter, since skills like that would only be relevant when you were in charge of something.
 * What sort of “power” do these people have? Can they dictate whether or not and what type buildings can be built within their settlement? Can they establish and collect taxes? Use that money to purchase shared services for the community?
 * Could utilize the idea of “deeds” or “contracts”, establish the formation of a settlement of whatever size.
 * What defines the limits of the area that falls under this settlement? Walls, fences, guard towers? Could vary by type/size of settlement.
 * What cost is associated with starting a settlement? If there’s no cost, why wouldn’t everyone do it? Can you carve out a settlement out of part of a larger settlement by paying the owner of that one? Who owns all the land initially and thus must be paid to establish early settlements?
 * How do people become members/residents of a settlement? How do they leave?
 * What are the benefits of belonging to a settlement?
 * Maybe you can’t build within the territory of a settlement unless you are a part of it?
 * Maybe some sort of pooled resources/services, like NPC guards for example.
 * There could be hierarchical ownership. For example, you own a contract for your house, which is in turn contracted as part of a town which is owned by someone else, which in turn is a contracted part of a region, which might in turn be owned by a kingdom.