Developing the Sandbox: Villages, Hamlets, and Thorps

This post is part of my series on developing the sandbox. You can read other posts in the series here. The series will, when necessary, go into detail on the development of my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown, but will also discuss sandbox development more generally. You can read play reports from my B1 campaign here.The subject of this post is the development of villages, hamlets, and thorps - that is, small settlements. For larger settlements like towns and cities, see my earlier post on the subject. The process of developing a small settlement will look similar to that for developing a large settlement, so it's worth it to revisit that post before proceeding.Villages, hamlets, and thorps are the bread and butter of low level D&D. This is, I think, because they are relatively small environments filled with simple people with simple problems and a relative lack of agency in solving those problems themselves. It is much easier to come up with a low level…