First Steps

A few guide lines.

Why and how the towns are being transplanted does not really matter, aliens or gods, that aspect is outside the focus of the game. Although they are powerful, with science or magic, there will be very little of either in the world. As an RPG the aim is to be low magic and pre-industrial in tech. Modern towns are not transplanted. It would be an alternative game style to allow typical fantasy magic into the world, one that we will set aside for now. However there may be a great deal of superstition, the belief in gods and magic has always been strong in human history, so most of the transported people will take the supernatural seriously.

The areas transplanted will be between 5 to 10 km across with the town at the center. We use the term town by default, but not every place will be one, some may be villages, castles or cities. Populations will range from 500 to 50,000 with most towns being close to 5000. In case it matters the area transported is actually a shear, so it extends far underground.

The areas are not all from the same time. We may have an Egyptian town from 2000bc, a Roman town from 100ad, a Japanese town from 800ad, and a European town from 1500ad. Of course we are not limited to one town per region, per time period. What is a limitation is the tech level, there should be no towns with steam power or electricity, basically anything pre-1700 is fine. For an alternative or later addition to the setting, we could add Victorian age towns, but we will set that aside for now.

The transplanted areas are scattered in the new world with a sizable gap between them, about 100 km. There is no pattern of cultural association. Say we have 3 English towns transported, they may be far from each other, with different nationalities between them. Like wise there is no pattern of historic association. A Celtic village from 100ad may find its closest neighbor is a Chines town from 1300ad.

There will be some serious imbalances of power created by these placements. The potential exists for a city state, which is what every town basically has become, to form an empire is hardly even. Some are much better suited to the task.  For example; Palmanova is a Renaissance fortress town with a population of about 4000, assuming it has a small army / militia with muskets and cannon...

Palmanova - northern Italy, built in 1590s

As we are hijacking historical places, we may also consider historical people. It may be an interesting idea to have some famous NPCs in the transplanted towns. So long as you dont stretch the dates too far, it should be no problem. You want to include Alexander the great, fine if you have a Greek city from around 330bc, or any town in Asia Minor he did travel a lot. With this in mind we could turn the game into a “lets meet all of history’s famous people” but that is not really the intend, so on the shelf the idea goes for now.