Riverside Village¶

Riverside Village


Kind	Village (scenario)
Places	8
People	50
Food	12 berry bushes
Water	the river, 5 buckets
Fire	1 campfire
Since	Phase 1
Status	designed · Phase 1
Technical	Scenarios and templates

Riverside Village is the first world: a small settlement between a forest and a river, with three wooden buildings huddled around a fire pit. It is the world every story so far is told in, and the one the engine is tuned against — "the village survives ten days" is the first promise the game makes.

The map¶

The village is eight places joined by paths. People are always in a place; walking takes one step along a path at a time, and each step takes about seven minutes of village time.

 deep forest ── forest edge ── village square ── river bank
                                     │
                                 fire pit ── inn ── smithy ── storehouse

Place	Outdoors?	What's there
Deep forest	yes	4 berry bushes, 3 wood piles. Far from everything, and from danger.
Forest edge	yes	8 berry bushes, 2 wood piles. The main foraging ground; 10 people start here.
Village square	yes	The hub. 20 people start here. Everything is one or two steps away.
Fire pit	yes	The campfire, lit from the start. Where the village gathers at night.
River bank	yes	Water, and 3 buckets already full. 5 people start here.
Inn	no	Wooden, warm, flammable. 5 people, 2 empty buckets. Next to the fire pit — an over-fed campfire can set it alight.
Smithy	no	Wooden. 5 people. Shares a wall with the inn and the storehouse, so fire travels.
Storehouse	no	Wooden. 5 people. The far end of the row — and four steps from the nearest berry.

Indoors matters. Buildings hold their warmth, so people inside feel the night less; they also hold their heat, so a fire inside one is a very different thing from the campfire outside. Walls muffle what you can see and hear from the next place (see What villagers know).

The people¶

Fifty villagers, all of one faction. Each is rolled at the start with their own personality: how cautious, how curious, how sociable, how quick to anger. Nobody is scripted; the same village with a different roll of personalities tells a different story. See Villager.

Everyone starts knowing the village — the eight places and where the berries, wood, water and buckets are. What they don't know is what has happened to those things since; that they learn by looking.

The resources¶

Berries regrow. A full bush holds about 25 meals; stripped, it refills in a third of a day. Fifty people eating four times a day need about 200 meals a day; twelve bushes can give nearly a thousand. The village is meant to be comfortable — scarcity is something you make (turn off regrowth), not the default.
Wood lies in piles in the forest for the campfire.
Water is in the river, and more usefully, in the three full buckets on its bank.

Things that happen here¶

On cold nights the village drifts toward the fire pit, and someone goes for wood when the fire runs low.
A building catches fire — because you lit it, or because the campfire was over-fed — and the cautious run while the brave run for buckets. Three full buckets, more than three brave people: the race is real.
If several buildings burn at once, the heat drives everyone out. Someone who stays too long dies.
Turn off regrowth and the berries run out in days.

History¶

Phase	Change
1	Introduced: 8 places, 50 villagers, one faction that knows its home, berries that regrow.