Building a Better Town System

11 Nov, 2025

Revolver is primarily a dungeon crawler, but in many dungeon crawlers I’ve played, players find themselves wanting to build a town or upgrade a home base. So I wanted to write some rules around that. Plus, the aesthetics of Revolver borrow from westward expansion; creating settlements is an important component.

None of this has been playtested, but hopefully I’ll get around to that soon. I’ll post how it goes.

Here are the design goals:

• Rules light, players shouldn’t feel like they need a spreadsheet The town should be less lucrative than adventuring.
• Stuff you get from improving town should benefit you while out on adventures.
• Town upkeep should happen once every few sessions, take no more than 20 minutes, and generate gameable complications.
• The town system should be modular. Easy to drop into any game and easy to graft new options onto.

Town Basics

Stats

A town has 3 core stats, influenced by its leadership and location. They are as follows.

Morale: A measure of happiness, faith in leadership, and enjoyment of culture
Security: A town’s ability to resist outside dangers and minimize crime
Abundance: A town’s ability to provide enough food, water, and shelter for its citizens

Towns also have Stability, a town’s resilience to unrest and disorder; you can think of this as the town’s HP.

If any town stat hits 0, the town folds, either from its citizens leaving or outside forces overrunning it.

What’s in a town?

Towns are assumed to have all of the structures they need for essential functions. This includes food production, shelter, and basic stores. All towns sell crude armor and shields, hand and field weapons, and everything in the Goods and Equipment table and the Food and Drinks table.

Towns also include buildings, special structures that provide income and provide player characters with boons to aid them on their adventure.

Income and Expense

Towns can make money, but they also cost money to run. This is measured by the income dice pool and the expense dice pool. Features that make money add dice to the income pool, and features that cost money add dice to the expense pool. During town upkeep, both pools are rolled to determine how much money the town makes (or loses).

Expansion

Towns grow and level up as characters invest more money into them. Each time a town levels up, it gains 1d4 stability, and leaders can choose a new building to add to the town. The following table shows the requirements to level up a town. 

Building Your Town

Step 1. Fund your town

Anyone can build a town for the low, low price of 100 gold, though it won’t be much more than a handful of buildings and a couple dozen people. Given the right circumstances, players may get a benefactor to front the initial money for a town’s start-up or take out a loan.

Your town starts with a 10 in Morale, Security, and Abundance, and 6 points of Stability. These values will be adjusted during the rest of town creation.

Step 2. Location, location, location

You can build a town on any hex that isn’t occupied by another town or obvious threat. 

Generally, a hex modifies a town’s stats as shown below. GMs should use their discretion. If a town is built beside several threats, a penalty to security could be in order. If a town is built beside a body of water, an abundance boost could be appropriate.

Step 3. Choose a Strength and a Weakness

All towns have areas they naturally excel in, and others where they struggle. Choose one stat to boost by 2, and one to reduce by 2.

Step 4. Choose a Leader

The party is in charge of the town when they are around, but they must leave someone in charge while they are away. The GM should provide a couple of trustworthy options during the town’s creation, or the players can present their own.

Either way, a leader has a morale, security, and abundance bonus that are applied to the town as long as they are leading it.

E.g.  Jerme Kenneth, the former outlaw, offers morale -1, security +2, and abundance +0 when he leads a town.

After choosing a leader, your town’s starting stats are finalized!

Step 5. Choose a tax rate

By default, a town's tax rate is 0, meaning it takes in just enough taxes to break even each month. You can increase or decrease the tax rate by up to 2 in either direction.

Increasing the tax rate lowers morale but adds income, while decreasing the tax rate increases morale but lowers income.

Step 5. Choose Starting Building

All towns start with one building from the list below.

Buildings

At town creation, and each time a town levels up, players can choose one building they meet the prerequisites for to add to the town. This list of buildings is non-exhaustive. Include whatever buildings fit your setting; they are pretty easy to make.

A building has a few qualities, which are written like so:

Building Name

Prerequisite: Requirements that must be met to construct a building
Income: Each month, add each building's income to the income dice pool
Expense: Each month, add each building's expense to the expense dice pool
Description of building benefits

Arena

Prerequisites: none
Income: 1d12
Expense: 1d6

Morale +1

The Arena produces a town champion. The champion can be brought adventuring as a mercenary for no charge.

Alchemy lab

Prerequisites: none
Income: 1d8
Expense: 1d4

Each month, the alchemy lab produces 4 of the following items in any combination:

• Smoke bomb
• Poison
• Dynamite
• Acid
• Antitoxin
• Fire bottle
• Flashbang

Blacksmith

Prerequisites: none
Income: 1d8
Expense: 1d4

Security +1

A town with a blacksmith can sell fine weapons and armor.

A blacksmith can also help upgrade weapons. A weapon left with the blacksmith gains the equivalent of 4 kills a month towards its next upgrade. A blacksmith can only work on 1 weapon at a time and cannot increase a weapon's kill count above 30.

Hunter’s Lodge

Prerequisites: none
Income: 1d8
Expense: 1d4

Abundance +1

Each month, you can send a group of hunters to scout any hex that’s within 2 weeks’ travel. When they return, they will provide a report detailing all points of interest in the hex, as well as cursory details on other hexes they passed through. 

Port

Prerequisites: The town must border a large body of water
Income: 2d4
Expense: 1d4

A port allows ships to dock.

A port comes with a trade ship. The trade ship can be borrowed, but in any month where the trade ship is used, the port adds no income. If the ship is destroyed, it is repaired or rebuilt in 3 months. During this time, the port adds no income.

Stables

Prerequisites: none
Income: 1d6
Expense: 1d4

The stables have 6 horses that player characters can use free of charge. They can procure and train one horse per month to replace any that die or are lost.

A town with stables can attempt to tame a wild creature with Mind 4 or less. The wild creature must be rendered harmless when it is delivered to the stables. Each creature has a tameness score defining how many weeks it takes to tame. After the creature has spent that much time in the stables, it is considered trained and can be brought adventuring.

Only one creature can be tamed at a time.

Special Buildings

These buildings have difficult requirements that must be met before they can be built. Some special buildings do not count against the maximum number of buildings a town can have.

Zombie Spawning Pit

Prerequisites: A ritual or item for creating and commanding undead
Income: 1d8
Expense: none

Morale -2

Zombies from zombie spawning pits aren’t too weak to be much use in a fight. However, they are perfectly obedient, don’t need rations, and can hold lanterns.

The party can borrow 2 zombies at a time from the pit to take adventuring. If a zombie dies or is lost, it is replaced the following month.

Satchel Monk Monastery

Prerequisites: You must find a satchel monk master to act as the monastery’s abbot
Income: 1d6
Expense: 1d4

Security +1

A town with a satchel monk monastery can reliably send letters to any other settlement that can be reached by horse.

Witch’s Hut

Prerequisites: You must find a witch to operate this building
Income: none
Expense: 1d4

Morale -1 for the first 3 months after its construction, while people get used to having a Witch in town.

A Witch’s Hut produces one random scroll per month, with casting dice equal to the number of witch templates the head witch has.

Witch’s Huts do not count against the total number of buildings a town can have.

Town Upkeep

The town upkeep phase happens once a month. During upkeep, we determine how much money the town made in the previous month, update town projects, and determine if there are any complications for the following month.

Determining Income

Add up all the sources of income and expense for the town into two separate dice pools. Roll both and subtract the income from the expenses. Multiply the result by the level of the town. The town made (or lost) that much money in silver pieces this month.

For example, a level 2 town with an income pool of 3d6 and 1d4, and an expense pool of 2d4 rolls both pools. The town’s income roll is 11, its expense roll is 4. We subtract the expenses from the income and get 7. Finally, we multiply 7 by the town's level, 2, and get 14. The town made 14 silver pieces this month.

Players can choose to take profits from the town or leave them in the town’s coffers for a rainy day.

After determining income, leadership can choose to raise or lower the tax rate.

Managing Debt

If a town enters the upkeep phase with unpaid debt, it loses a point of stability, plus 1 more per 10s owed. If stability is reduced to 0, the excess stability loss is applied to a random stat, representing workers going unpaid or services failing.

Progress Projects

Update the status of any long-term projects, such as the blacksmith’s weapon upgrades or the Hunter’s lodge’s scouting. Inform the players if any are complete and note any new projects that the players want to start this month.

Resolving Complications

If any complications are unresolved, the town experiences the consequences of those complications. If there are no unresolved complications, the town regains 1d6 missing stability. If stability is at its maximum, instead, you may choose a stat to restore 1d6 missing points.

Checking for New Complications

If stability is above 0, roll a check for each of the town’s stats. On a success, there is no complication relating to that stat this month. If the town fails 1 or more checks, choose one of them randomly and roll on its complication table.

If stability is 0, just roll on the unstable complications table.

There is never more than one new complication per month.

Complications Tables

When a town fails a stat check during upkeep, a complication occurs. Complications range in severity but mismanaging them can result in stability damage or a dysfunctional town. Consequences occur during the following upkeep phase if the complication has not been resolved.

Each table includes a possible method of resolving a complication, but players can attempt any method they can come up with. Some complications can be solved with diplomacy or policy; others can be resolved by adventuring!

If stability is reduced to zero, any consequences that would damage stability instead reduce the stat associated with the complication.

Once a complication has been used, it should be replaced by a new one. Once a town has been around for a bit, you may want to include complications related to specific buildings or NPCs in town.

Morale Complications

Security Complications

Morale Complications

Stability Complications

Stability complications only occur when stability is 0. These complications are more severe than other complications and the consequences for failing to resolve them are significant. These complications often have no simple solution. When a stability complication is resolved, restore 1d6 missing stability.

Potential System Expansions

I wanted to keep the first pass of the system light, but I think there are some easy opportunities for expansion if one enjoys the system. Adding new buildings and complications is an easy route. Another consideration I had was to add notable people to the world, sort of like in Civilization. If you bring them to your town, they can grant you some sort of ability, or upgrade the income of a building, or raise a stat. Something to that effect.

I want to playtest it as written before I go adding more to it though. If you made it this far hopefully you get some use out of it too. Happy gaming!