Oh! I was very excited for Banished before it came out but only put a short amount of time into it. I see that Colonial Charter add a massive amount of content to the game. I think I'd like to put some more time into the vanilla version of the game first though. Has it been streamlined and bugfixed at all? I remember the villagers having very strange and erratic behavior at times, especially related to fire.
The banished subreddit has a lot of information on the vanilla game. There is a bug guide there. I'd say check it out if you haven't yet. There are still some bugs but nothing unbearable. I haven't had a fire in a village in a long time so I can't say much about that. I know that if you're not producing enough food or firewood, that can lead to the people boarding that, making the problem worse, and everyone dying. You definitely want to get vanilla down before going into Colonial Charter. If not, you'll be completely lost, and even then, expect to have a village or two to get used to everything. It is an extremely challenging but fun game.