What's in this carriage? (1d6)
1 - 3 Residential
4 - 5 Blended
6 Special
The way the train rearranges itself during storms, it's not likely there would be districts of similar cars. Each car would be its own little community with the end doors as the border. Trade routes would re-establish themselves with each new configuration and the car's fortunes would rise or fall depending on how close it was to resources, industry, commerce, etc.
What kind of residence is this? (1d6)
1 Slum - cheap boarding houses or penny-a-night flophouses.
2 - 4 Apartments - top floor split into cramped apartments, bottom floor is shared facilities like cooking, cleaning, laundry, sanitation.
5 - 6 Family homes - each compartment is a separate residence with all the conveniences built in.
Blended: a blended result on the first table is a combination of residential and shopping area. The class of residences should be influenced by the kind of trade going on here.
How many trades are represented here? (1d6)
1 - 3 One trade.
4 - 5 Two trades.
6 Three trades.
What kind of trade goes on here? (1d6)
1 - Market
2 - Shops
3 - Craftshop
4 - Hospital
5 - School
6 - Chapel
That's a lot of rolling already but we could break it down further. (1d6)
1 - 3 One service.
4 - 5 Two services.
6 Three services.
Roll 1d6 to pick a service:
Market
1 - 2 produce
3 - 4 livestock
5 - 6 craft
Shops
1 - 2 food
3 - 4 clothes
5 - 6 equipment (which lumps in everything from gardening tools to stationary)
Craftshop
1 - 2 carpentry
3 - 4 textiles (a broad category including cloth, rope, nets, canvas)
5 - 6 tools
Hospital
1 - 2 herbalist-apothecary
3 - 4 barber-surgeon
5 - 6 wise woman
In this case the wise woman assists with births and gives good advice like "that'll heal if you stop picking at it."
School
1 - 2 classrooms (for children)
3 - 4 lecture hall (for older students)
5 - 6 sage (for private consultations and lessons)
Chapel
1 - 2 shrine
3 - 4 cloister
5 - 6 mortuary
A cloister may not count as a service. Let's call it a feature instead.
To round it out, the mortuary does (1d6):
1 - 3 cremation
4 - 5 'sea' burial - the corpse is wrapped and dropped from the train when it reaches suitable terrain.
6 sky burial - the corpse is ceremonially dismembered and left on the carriage roof for birds to eat.
What does a special result mean? (1d6):
Some of these results are special because you wouldn't need many of them. Some because you wouldn't want many of them. In either case, they're not likely to share a car with homes or shops.
1 - Forge
2 - Factory
3 - Slaughterhouse
4 - Red light district (brothels, gambling dens, opium parlours, seedy taverns)
5 - Goblins
6 - Unique car (pick from contributor-submitted carriages)
I've included goblins because I think it would be fun and useful to have the occasional car of creatures that specialise in getting around the train quickly. They wouldn't all have man-firing cannons like Skerples' goblin cannonade car, obviously. Some of them would use sensible time-tested methods like firing harpoons at neighbouring cars, or running rope under the axles just inches from the track, or training giant birds of prey to carry people.
This means that the unique adventure-laden cars from the project folder should randomly come out once in every 36 cars. That seems realistic and is probably a good result for the train residents' peace of mind. Any game set on the Indefinite Train is going to be a journey even if the train never stops, because the linked cars are effectively one miles-long corridor with rooms leading off it. This should provide the space to drop in a few complications on the way to and from a capital-A Adventure.
Let's try this out. I roll a 6 (special), followed by a 5 (slaughterhouse). So this car is going to have animal pens, probably on the top floor so the stairs would be replaced by ramps. Downstairs there's a killing floor and butchery. There's going to be a stream of carts with animal carcasses through the neighbouring cars. I wonder how they feel about that?
For the next car I get a 3, then a 2. Residential apartments. They probably don't care for the dead animal traffic through their living area, but people gotta eat.
Next is a 4, followed by a 6. Blended with three trades. The first trade is 1, a market and 4, two services. I get 2 and 2 for services. 2 is produce, and I'll take the next result since it's a double, which gives me livestock. I guess this is where carriage one gets its animals from. The second trade is 2 and 1, shops selling food. There's probably another butchery here, turning large cuts of meat into small ones and making sausages. The third trade is 6, a chapel, with two services. I get 1 and 2 for services. Both of those indicate a shrine, so I'll roll the second result down to a cloister. Given the tone of the shops, the residences here are probably apartments.
Our fourth car is 5, blended, with 6, three trades. For the trades we get 5, a school and 4, two services. That's 2 and 3, classrooms and lecture halls. The second trade is 4, a hospital, 1 for one service and 4 for a barber-surgeon. The third trade is 2 for shops and 2 for one service. The service is 5, equipment. The trades we have in this car make it seem a little more up-market than the previous one, so let's say it hosts several family homes. The equipment that shop sells may be high-class homewares. (Can we interest the adventurers in a Live-Laugh-Love wall plaque?)
The fifth car is 6, a special and 2, a factory. Maybe they manufacture Live-Laugh-Love wall plaques, or maybe they make something more useful. Lamps, rope, precision scales for weighing your gold.
Our sixth and final car is 3, residential and 2, apartments.
On the other hand...
And of course now I've gotten all that out of my head, I start thinking okay, but it could be fun if each car was unique, if players had to worry about supplies and equipment, if they had to make opportunities to rest and tend their wounds, if they had to find allies and develop contacts on the fly.
Brain, why you do this to me?
