Building Settlements

From frontier encampments to interstellar space stations, settlements play an important role in shaping the cultures of your setting and the themes of your campaign. Developing a setting can be a daunting task, but these guidelines help give you a start in designing your campaign's next port of call! In Starfinder, settlements are where characters can rest, recharge, retrain, and dedicate themselves to other downtime activities, all in relative peace. Traditionally, an adventuring band comes together in some kind of settlement, be it a small colony recently established on a moon in the Vast or a bustling continent-spanning city on the surface of a densely populated world. Some adventures take place entirely within a single settlement, while in others the party visits settlements only briefly between their adventures in space. The first thing you should consider when building a settlement is its role in your story. Is this a major metropolis the heroes will visit again and again during their adventures? A backwater outpost where their adventures begin? The distant interstellar capital from which an evil tyrant issues cruel edicts? The settlement's campaign role will inform many of the other decisions you make about the place. Once you know why you need the settlement, consider why it would exist in the setting. While established settlements certainly need access to sundries and supplies, local access to these resources are only necessary in low-tech or isolated outposts. Metropolises can even exist on worlds devoid of any naturally occurring food or water, although they're likely populated largely by creatures who don't need to eat or drink. These settlements need to be in such a valuable location that it offsets their need to import necessary supplies. While it might be easier to create a space station or city merely to serve the characters' needs, determining what function it has independent of the characters adds verisimilitude and can provide hooks for further stories. Settlement stat blocks describe the components and traits of a settlement. You don't need to create a settlement stat block, but doing so can help flesh out the community you're building, and they can be a useful reference for your game.