Recently in my discord campaign my players want to build a home for a pack of kobolds they rescued from a dungeon. I'm using Reave to run the game and I didn't yet have anything for building strongholds or settling hexes. The game uses lower XP requirements than traditional D&D, so the costs listed in B/X can't be easily used or converted, so I made my own rules for building structures down to the 10x10 area. By designing it so, the players can easily afford small structures earlier in the game. By having the rules to support building cabins, single room stone buildings, and other smaller dwellings I hope to introduce domain play at a local scale earlier than most OSR games do, as well as providing the ability for players to draw the floorplan of their own strongholds just as they see fit once they acquire enough treasure. On to the mechanics!
A single craftsman can create a finished wood or stone 10x10 area in a day. The average cost is 12 coins per craftsman (plus necessities like food and water), 3 coins for wood boards or 5 coins for cobbled stone. Wooden logs may be felled by a laborer at a rate of 2d6 logs a day. Logs may be used to quickly build walls, two craftsmen may build a 30x5 wall from 6 logs a day. Stone and log walls are assumed to be 1 foot thick while wooden board walls are assumed to be of negligible thickness. Castle walls will need to be 10' thick and cost 5 times as much in labor, as well as three days to construct. Craftsmen will often refuse to work unprotected in the wilderness, requiring Guards before they will begin work.
Using these numbers we can price out a few types of buildings the players may want to build.
10x10 shack with dirt floor
Four wooden walls, 12c
Wooden roof, 3c
Dirt floor, 0c
60c in pay, 15c in materials, 75c total
Stone House, 30x30 with 3 bedrooms, kitchen area, living room
9 days for floor
12 for outer walls
5 for bedroom walls
2 for kitchen walls
9 roof - wooden
37 days, 444c in labor, 167c in material, 611c total
Manor, four 30x20 bedrooms, 30x40 dining hall, 30x20 kitchen, 30x20 servants area, 30x40 master bedroom, 20x100 main hall
36 outer stone walls 180c
20 main hall stone walls 100c
9 left wing stone walls 45c
9 right wing stone walls 45c
800 floor spaces, (wooden/stone) 2400c/4000c
800 roof spaces, wooden 2400c
874 days, 9048c in labor, 5170c/6770c
14,218c (Wood floor) or 15,818c (Stone Floor)
Ten men, food and water for 88 days, 1760c
With these rules we see that the larger the floor space you use, the more expensive the cost of the project. Converting some specific items from the "Castle Plans" section of B/X to this system;
Castle Wall, 100' long, 20' high 5,000 gp
This requires twenty 10'x10' areas of stone at 5c each, for a cost of 100c, then multiplied by five for the thickness of a castle wall for a final cost of 500c. This takes 60 days in Reave and 10 in B/X. Note that B/X has no cost or mention of the amount of men needed for construction other than that an engineer must be hired for very 100,000gp of the project. You could hire six men in Reave and complete the project in 10 days as well, adding 720c to the cost for labor.
Square Keep, 60' base, 80' high 75,000 gp
With no mention on how many floors this keep has, we'll assume each 10' height is it's own floor made of wood. You have 24 stone wall sections per level, as well as 36 floor sections (plus 36 for the roof). That becomes 120c for the walls,108c for the floor totaling 228c per level for materials. We have 60 sections each level, at 12c each for labor gives 720c. Adding materials and labor give us 948c then multiply by 8 for all the levels we arrive at 7,584c plus the roof (432c in labor, 108c in materials) for a total of 8,124c. This construction would take 60 days per level plus 36 for the roof, for a total of 516 days to build. That may seem a very long time until you consider this is one man building an eight story tower with sixty feet to a side! In B/X this takes 150 days, a time that can be nearly matched by hiring 3 or 4 laborers 172 days or 129 days, respectively. As with B/X this all assumes the wood and stone are already at the location of the project, as well as the location is cleared.
Stone Building, Civilian (two story, attic, 120' of wall,
wooden doors, stairs, floors, and roof) 3,000 gp
Assuming "120' of wall" means the outside wall, this is a similar building to the stone house I provided as an example above. We have 12 sections of stone walls and 9 sections of wooden floor per level, plus the roof. That breaks down to 60c for the walls, 27c for the floor (87c per level), and another 27c for the roof. Totaling 201c in materials, plus 612c in labor, 813c for the house to be built. This project would take 6 days in B/X, If you hire 9 laborers in Reave you can complete it in the same time.
We see that with these rules the values are close to B/X once you consider the XP values are roughly a tenth in Reave. I hope to see my players attempting to build earlier in the campaign, letting them make a place on the map their own.
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