My players have found the near abandoned town of Skullport and they want to adopt it. Build it up, fill it with NPCs, and manage it until the Flamesskulls get back on their feet again. Any guides for running a town out there? This is basically becoming a mini game for half the party that they want to do in between game sessions.

1. Make a list of all the important buildings that you put in a town.
2. Figure out what the cost of materials would be.
3. Figure out the time needed to construct each element of town.
4. Encourage the players to find trade routes and merchants to gather said materials.
5. Place obstacles in their way in the form of weather, wandering monsters/animals, and Bandits/Thieves.
6. Have random NPCs show up, encourage them to go hire/recruit new NPCs for the town.
7. Repeat 1-6 until the town is rebuilt.
8. Have other cities try to set up trade routes.
9. Introduce bandits and other ne'er-do-wells who try to overthrow the city (with or without the players present)
10. Let the players reap the rewards of building, maintaining, and upgrading their own town.

This sounds like an awesome idea. The only thing I would add to DMThac0 is time management. you'd need to keep a good handle on how much time passes while they're off doing quest type stuff so you could have the town grow/change in reasonable ways for that time span. They could also recruit new NPC's when they're out and about and try to convince them to move to their new town.

Look at Matt Colville's Stronghold and Followers. It has some guidelines to use for building keeps and establishments. Those can be adjusted to fit to build a townshall instead of a keep. And then investing in other buildings and businesses. Each time your PC's upgrade something they can roll on tables to attract retainers, diplomats, ambassadors, soldiers, farmers, craftsman of many types. Combine that with what thac0 mentioned and you got something awesome.

With a city they'll have to build an army to defend it as well from all sorts of brigands and "Warlords". Could even have side missions/quests where your players play as some of the retainers instead of their main PC's. Using that to see their progress from a different perspective.

Narrative have the PC's walk around and notice the differences of growth and get involved with their community of NPC's.

Something similar is what my players will eventually get access to once they receive a Keep as reward. They'll become barons of an area with two small villages and a large piece of land. They'll have to collect taxes and develop the area. Get involved with politics. Or get an ambassador to do it for them if they don't want to.

I don't have a lot to offer this thread other than my support for the idea. I think it's wonderful.

How'd this turn out for them?