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Civilization Crafting

Civilization Crafting is the campaign-scale branch of the Andórë Crafting System.

Item Crafting changes what characters carry.

Civilization Crafting changes what characters build, control, support, and defend.

Use these rules when characters build bastions, strongholds, settlements, workshops, supply lines, fortifications, civic institutions, resource sites, roads, docks, ships, or other long-term works that shape the world around them.

Core Idea

Gold does not build civilization by itself.

Materials + Labor + Time + Protection build civilization.

Characters must gather resources, move them, assign workers, defend stockpiles, maintain supply lines, and make places physically exist in the world.

Core Pages

  • Material Acquisition covers construction-scale resources, Material Units, stockpiles, transport, salvage, and supply lines.
  • Labor Management covers work crews, skilled hirelings, project assignment, construction stalls, parallel work, and defense.
  • Bastions covers character-scale bases, mapped facilities, Bastion construction, and Bastion expansion.
  • Strongholds covers settlement-scale structures, population capacity, Room Points, stronghold facilities, and long-term civilization rebuilding.

Scales of Civilization Crafting

Bastion Scale

A Bastion is a character-facing base, outpost, home, workshop, tower, lodge, fortified camp, or similar place.

Bastions are map-first. If a room, facility, door, stair, wall, workshop, or teleportation circle exists in the Bastion, it must exist on the map.

Use Bastions when the party is building or expanding a specific location they can personally inhabit, defend, and use.

Stronghold Scale

A Stronghold is larger than a single building.

It includes structures, people, stockpiles, defenses, facilities, infrastructure, and the social body supported by those works.

Use Strongholds when the party is rebuilding civilization, founding a settlement, creating a faction center, expanding a population base, or building institutions that outgrow a single Bastion.

Shared Assumptions

Civilization Crafting assumes that:

  • materials must be physically gathered or salvaged;
  • materials must be transported to a usable stockpile;
  • workers must be assigned to projects;
  • skilled workers matter;
  • construction takes time;
  • layout matters;
  • stockpiles and supply lines can be attacked;
  • and built things create obligations as well as benefits.

Using These Rules at the Table

When a character wants to build something, ask:

  1. What scale is this? Bastion, Stronghold, infrastructure, or something else?
  2. What materials are required? Wood, stone, iron, special materials, or all of the above?
  3. Where are those materials coming from? Salvage, quarry, forest, ruins, trade, ship cargo, or another source?
  4. How are they being moved? Wagon, ship, labor crew, road, river, teleportation circle, or other route?
  5. Who is doing the work? Unskilled crews, skilled hirelings, artisans, engineers, ship crew, or player characters?
  6. How long does it take? Use the relevant Bastion or Stronghold construction time.
  7. What can go wrong? Raids, delays, poor layout, worker shortages, sabotage, spoilage, politics, weather, or monsters.

Final Rule

Civilization Crafting is how the characters leave fingerprints on the world.

At the item scale, they make tools, weapons, reagents, armor, poisons, and wonders.

At the civilization scale, they make homes, roads, walls, workshops, institutions, and legacies.

Or, in its shortest form:

Item Crafting changes what the characters carry.
Civilization Crafting changes where the characters belong.

Referenced by