I ran a 12 session campaign in a town. The town was a dungeon, the inns were safe but boring, There were around 12ish areas of adventure that Players could find. Naturally my players went to around 4 of them and it was alright. Doing it again I would make a rough street map because I want to be able to describe the city better and let the Players get comfortable with it. I'd treat the streets like hallways and the notable locations like rooms. I also had a nightmare urban jungle in the shadowfell where the Ranger got into guerilla warfare with monsters, and I thought that was pretty fun, especially since the panic when the Ranger realized the harpoons were being used to drag them off an edge they could fall off. Didn't happen (be generous) but the very idea of it put the fear of god into the Players. Super fun, you can do some really neat stuff!
I ran a game for two years until Covid killed it out of a village named "Shademeadow." It was a frontier village some 20 miles further along an ancient abandoned highway from the last Frontier city. It was founded by a previous group of adventurers who defated a necromancer in a tower deep in the lost kingdom (that the highway led to) It was the safe haven for the sandbox I created, but they had to travel to the city (two day round trip) to get any new items or spells beyond basic rationa or repairs. It set up a great dynamic cause they were always a little nervous to go to the city cause the road was often harassed by hill giants, goblins, and harpies. The biggest problem was that I made the NPC adventurers too interesting, and they always wanted to spend whole sessions role playing in the village and trying to get the old adventurers to come out and help them. I really started to run thin on excuses and "duties running the village," and finally, I killed the Paladin NPC (heroically) when he assisted them with the Black Dragon mini boss. They (and the NPC party) were so devastated that they stopped harassing the NPCs to help them lmao
Great vid Daniel, they keep getting better. I think building a town adventure would be fun! Thanks. I hope this channel grows quickly. You have a ton of great insight.
When you determine that a settlement exists in a particular location, and determine the general size, how many known buildings do you create (if any)? Or do you randomly determine if a given business or source of interest is present? Or do you create them based on the players inquiries and expressed interests?
Good question - I typically decide the size in population and then buildings based on the area it’s in and how wealthy. A poor village in the wood might have just a handful of buildings, where a rich village in the plains might have many.
@@BanditsKeep likewise, location may affect size ~ is it on the borderland, or in the heart of the kingdom? Is the borderland city larger (for self-preservation) or is it smaller because it's a new settlement?
I am a DM and I exclusively run published modules that I string together into a campaign. When I think about the settlements that I've read and run, the amount of detail presented is scaled to what the PCs are "expected" to do in that location. In Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Orlane is not a safe location. The Village of Homlet, is safe, or at least mostly. Same for the titular Keep from Keep on the Borderlands. The village of Saltmarsh (in the original), was almost 'sir not appearing in this film.' I think the village of Drellin's Ferry from Red Hand of Doom is a pretty well statted-out location. There's just enough shops to supply a party without going over the top. Then there are a string of villages that aren't quite "enough" -- enough people, shops, quest hooks, whatever. Phandalin, from Lost Mines of Flapdoodle, Albridge from Reavers of Harkenwold, Fairhill from Crucible of Freya. For cities, I've run far less. (I suspect they are less popular to write and run, in part because of the cognitive load on the GM to manage a more complex environment.) I have run 2 examples of what I would call small cities: Brindol, from Red Hand of Doom, and Sasserine, from the Savage Tide adventure path. Again, both of these places had "content" prepped for the PCs to experience; it was part of the plot. My biggest weakness, I think, as a DM is portraying NPCs to my players. Maybe it's a "chicken and egg" dynamic but my players rarely will interact with villagers and townspeople. They want/like their quest hooks straightforward and then it's on to combat. (Second biggest weakness is politics and multiple plot threads, but that's a complaint for a different time.)
I did a similar thing stringing modules in Hyperboria. As to the players not interacting with NPCs that is something I have rarely encountered. But it does seem like you are “handing out” the adventures so perhaps they don’t feel a need?
Love it. I'm starting to run a urban crawl kind of 'west marches style', where different parties go to explore the city each time we run. It's a low magic horror-pulp game on a mega city state like Constantinople of the late middle ages. The safe point is a tavern on the slum of the city, and they all start from there. It's a lot of fun. Last session two characters decided to heist the university to steal some things and faced a doppelganger of a dead professor.
Some of my best sessions of my ongoing "sandbox"-ish campaign take place in towns and cities. This Sunday theyll be attending a noble wedding jn one of the major cities. They only met the bride to be when trying to pawn a fist sized ruby, and found her wealthy father was willing to buy it as part of the dowry. Since the bard in the larty was dtarting to make a name for herself as a musical performer, she was hired on as the wedding singer. A jealous ex, who just so happens to be a warlock with a penchant for poisons, will be making the wedding day adventure extra special.
For large city adventures, consider safe districts functioning like villages, maybe from rep or alignment. In many ways you could even run a city adventure similar to wilderness, with smaller scale hexes and districts instead of biomes.
RE: adventuring in town. My current group has a borderland fortress town / small city as their current base of operations. When they first came into town I had the rogue spot some "rogue sign" markings on various locations (kinda like hobo markings, in Theives'cant). She was then able to make inquiries to get the "lay of the land" as far as the local gangs went. The Party of course made acquaintance with their innkeeper and learned about the businesses around the inn that provided services for visitors. The religious and mage-types in the Party were made aware of the various temples, shrines, and schools, while the nature-types found out about the ranger & druid enclaves in the area. Out of the dozen rumors I gave them, they chose to help a local temple that had uncovered some old catacombs during renovations. There have also been some hints about a cult in the sewers, as well as an as-yet-unknown intelligence network operating in the city.
Reminder: medieval Europe was TINY. A village was just where the workers lived who worked on a manor (a farm of about 1500 acres). They had about 100 people (always a blacksmith and a baker) & a church, no market. No walls; villagers ran to the fortified manor house. A hamlet was a small village with no church & probably worked a yeoman's land. A town had 500 to 1500 people & walls & closed the gates at night. It had a charter to hold a market once or twice a week. There was no such thing as a “general store“. If you want shoes, go to a shoemaker. A nobleman's castle may be nearby. A city was anything bigger than 2000 people and had the county sheriff and court of law. A noble castle was nearby. There's a market every day except holy days. London was maybe 50k; the next three were 8 to 10k. Paris, Rome, & Constantinople were a few hundred thousand & a sewer system & cobblestone streets.
I purchased City State of the Invincible Overlord released by Necromancer Games 2004. It has a bunch of tables for city encounters. And I used these to seed my own random tables. Customizing the tables helps to drive the narrative you want to see develop. Thanks for the content.
Chris again. Another settlement I have is Chenoweth Falls (a Cornish word btw). If you remember the SiFi channel show Eureka, it was an obscure place full of mad geniuses. This is that sort of place. A walled in fishing town off a fjord where old adventurers have made their homes. A place where it’s best to have the ability of true seeing or true sight because everyone is spying on everyone else in some “form” (pun intended) or fashion. Lots of mid to high level intrigue!
We ran town adventures back in the day because they were like dungeon adventures above ground: narrow streets that ran in all directions, two story structures with basements. And escape tunnels between buildings!
I accidentally ran a city campaign once. I say "accidentally" in that I never intended for the vast majority of the campaign to take place in one city, but that's how it worked out.
A city is a great place to introduce factions, politics and/or intrigue to a campaign. Otherwise, it's difficult to find a believable scenario where several powerful/influential figures [with competing agendas] would coexist that the players could encounter. And besides, where else would you find a thieves guild?
I'm keen on the Marienburg thieves guild from WFRP. The "thieves guild" is an internal joke. There are several street gangs with their own competing rackets. They have a mafia Commission-style group where the currently dominant gang heads meet to discuss the few shared issues they got, like division of turf without drawing city government attention. They still have cool places you can rob and fun people to run into but no central guildhall and fees and courses. I think the thief green book had some discussion about how TSR thought a thief guild could operate in a fantasy world.
The old drunken troll who gets teased by the goblin gang in the woods nearby. Smart townsfolk give him what he wants and he leaves them alone. But those nasty goblins mean to nice old troll! Fun! Daniel you come up with great ideas! Love the inspiration!
my first TTRPG i ever played was pathfinder adventure card game (not the 3.5 hack). mechanically, it was a great intro to TTRPGs, and every scenario is a tiny sandbox where the major NPCs to deal with are all in different areas. That feeling of a living world stuck with me. When I design a town, there will be a web of interconnected in-town adventure hooks.
Hi Daniel, at 9:55 it feels like that should be a meme, or a t-shirt. "Do you want murder hobos? Because that's how you get murder hobos." 😄 Love watching your videos!
I used to use villages, towns and cities a fair bit as settings, sometimes between wilderness and dungeons with small 'side adventures' and from time to time as the base of the adventure. A merchant hires the out of town PC's to deal with the thieving from his warehouse, he doesn't want to risk his reputation as the thieves are luring rats there (yup, thiefly wererat alert !) while stealing his produce or they have to venture down to the sewers or the 'under city' that the current one was built on (Mary King's Close type stuff) and when they got to higher levels they get to know a smarter class of NPC's and get embroiled in their skulduggery and now the PC's are the ones worrying about their reputations. Most villages will have a hermit or midwife who can knock up simple cures (1-2 HP which at low levels is handy) and mild cures for poisons etc. Each to their own but I got bored with constant dungeon bashing and preferred a bit of variety so assumed my players were the same so liked to mix it up a bit. Thanks for taking the time to do the vids Daniel, I look forward to them.
Towns are usually a centerpiece to my adventure zone. Initially they serve to equip and service the adventure party but as the campaign unfolds I can usually hook the party into something intriguing or emotionally involving as they get to know the different NPCs. You know, kill some wolves that are ripping the local's goat herd apart and it turns out to be a pack of werewolf nobles from the chateau on the outskirts of town, etc, etc... Also, I require my players to train in order to level up so getting to know the local mage or cleric, thief and fighter baron becomes a sort of mini game because the PCs will have to understudy for their next level. This is usually a good opportunity to get the party beholding to a NPC or two and quest on behalf of them as payment for training. All this stems from kicking around the local town or settlement and interacting with the locals. Great engines for driving a campaign for many sessions that seemingly materialize out of the ether all due to kicking around town.
Excellent video as always Daniel! I'm prepping for my first IRL campaign (been doing online campaigns up to this point), and your videos have been immensely useful. I am actually in the middle of building out my settlements, so this is awesome, gives me some stuff to chew on. Cheers!
I use the old Judges Guild Campaign. And if you're talking major city, the City State of the Invincible Overlord is a place packed with adventure, intrigue and shops galore! Even their "Wilderness" settings are packed with good stuff. You might find a city, village or castle that looks like a great place but if you listen to the rumors you will find things are different than they appear.
The hamlet or town with tavern and inn are classic hubs to explore forward into the wilderness and base from to delve dungeons. Here are all those helpful NPCs and the first encounters with the deeper antagonists who thread through the world. I like to start with a Beggar's Court, the 0 level theives and beggar children who can be helpful for rumors and lead to the higher level theives guild or the assassins guild in a bigger settlement. Some traders and craftsfolk, a local low level lord or his minion bailiff or sheriff. And that hamlet a full day walk from any other so it is isolated enough but connected to a wider world. All stuff I lifted from T1 and B2, just enough to see where things go and things to go after!
In my world there is a city similar to Constantinople. The West side is polite and cosmopolitan, the East side is a bit rough. Between the two is a bridge like the medieval London bridge. The players started on the bridge and went back and forth from end to end. They never left it. Each little pier was a village unto itself.
Fihner-The Home of Little Secrets is my current locale for the party. It began there as a starting point February 2020 with the Dwarf Barbarian having settled in this Halfling Village as their blacksmith. And now the party has returned to defend the village because there are two cults or brigand bands skulking around after an individual of the community of innocent farmers. At least that’s what the outside world thinks. The farmers are actually running a psychedelic mushrooms cottage industry that not even the players are aware. And no, that’s not what I had in mind for Fihner when I first started it. But let’s face it, a town often has a nefarious element in it. The question is, how many of the people are in on it? In the 80s a fellow DM had a town that was all werewolves. Take that and run with it!
Geek chic baby! Everyone was coveted of my Dungeon Crawler black tee at my last game sesh. Hopefully I got you a couple of more sales. I agree with you on the reason for the town in game and in the game world. It should indicate safety and a source for info & adventure hooks, especially when it borders the frontier/wilderness. A city adventure is something that should be set up from the beginning. I haven't run a city based adventure with d&d based games, but I ran a long Warhammer Fantasy RPG that took place in many major cities. But that's Warhammer and the setting, tone, and expectations are obvious. The players know they are gonna be down and out riff raff from the get go. They gotta get some coin (honestly or nefariously) if they want to stay in the nice side of the city where the watch actually cares.
I would love a town adventure overview. As my next campaign is basically a kind of Jagged Alliance type of game where they are hired to take out (or get revenge on) a leader of some evil group (in this case a bandit king) that took control of the region, thou a small one. The main way this will happen is each settlement will be bigger and be more defended than the last. For example the first settlement will be a one map (or district) and a settlement will not be freed until the whole settlement is free from the bandit king's army. So any help with ideas or general advice is welcomed as the scale of the world will be new to me both in size and in complexly. As I hope not to have npc 3942 or whatever for the most part show up in game. At lest a name and a one or two world thing I could use as something to go off of when playing them.
That sounds like a fun campaign - I would create a few key high level figures, then concentrate on the first area - don’t try to build out everything up front, maybe just as sentence or two about each - that way you can adapt as the players do their thing
@@BanditsKeep Thanks for the advice. By key high level figures do you mean the first town mayor or like the bandit king himself? The Kingdoms around the region are pretty indifferent. This is due the region itself being not a part of any kingdom. New trade routes where made to go around the area that are much easier to maintain and quicker. On a side note there are some npcs that could help defend the settlements once a quest has been done to restore them to what they once where. Think a high level mage and warrior that where level drained and could not really fight anymore. Lastly at the moment this campaign is not even stared but is planed to be the next one my group does. So I have some time to set up a frame work of ideas on what to do.
Would be nice to see you do something easy to drop into a small crawl like a 5 room or 3 hex situation. Small community/ hamlet/small, med, large village sizes are optimal for this I think. Also perfect for introducing new players to your world. I'm a fan of Raymond E. Fiest Magician series as a basic layout and arrangement for my world. Mostly just the general geography and world map, because it was great and saved me a lot of time and effort to make from scratch. It let's everyone know where the different races come from and what space in the world they occupy. Then I read the Elric sages and they became the back story for the dragon riders in Magician (not to mention how game of thrones completely ripped off M. M.'s Elric sages for a certain ancient civilization's back story and made tons of money from someone else's work). Then I read the forgotten realms series and started using them as how the world worked now. That's where It's been for a long time in a first edition Advanced d&d setting. It's also sat there idle for a number of years too. I recently found your channel and have enjoyed going through your many videos. You have inspired me to dust off my old red & blue books and rethink my world again. I only played B/X for about a year before moving to Advanced. That was in 6th grade to 7th grade around 1982, 83. So I really didn't realize/ remember how much difference there was between the two. I was recently asked about teaching/ running a group of mostly new players and that fell apart before it got started more or less. It was a 5hr drive to start with then the new half of the group had to relocate due to work before we got together the next month. But I think I might look locally for a small group of 2-5 that can meet once a week or two instead of every other month. And maybe don't mind switching up who's DM so everyone gets to play. Anyway sorry for the rambling love your outlook and style of play. So refreshing from the old power gaming style we used to run. Keep up the good work. Us gen X'ers have to stick together lol.
Thanks for sharing your world. I find a group that can meet more often tends to stay together longer, after a half dozen sessions it starts to become a habit vs the once a month event
Adventurers provide sone business to settlements, but also bring inflation with their hoards of coins. Murderhobos might give a bad reputation to adventurers in general.
I always find fascinating, how would someone think, that villagers would not have weapons on them in fantasy settings - bro there are goblins in nearby cavern, orcs in forrest and from time to time, Manticore fly by and much more. Economy is boosted due to magic - you would be a dumb villager, to not get your hands on some. In fact, your kingdom rulers would be dumb, to not get you some. + It's possible, that your village have a retired adventurer. The local cleric, hunter in the woods nearby is ranger, bartender might be an old bard who want some peace after all he went through. If your players will get some settlement with people in it, get them weapons for freak sake, those goblin scums will not clear by themselves.
@@BanditsKeep you are right about that 👍 I wish I would left my part about general functioning of those words, without making assumptions about particular ones. Hope this two comments will get to the readers as well.
Just do it on a grand scale and cheese it up a bit. Like they do in a Japanese Anime. The town is built around the Dungeon Entrance. The entire economy is based on Adventurers bringing treasure up from the Dungeon. 😊
On the question of whether a settlement is fair game for danger, discussing that at the start of a campaign is essentially like negotiating the terms of the game in the first place, isn't it? The same as, say, discussing whether you want this campaign to have evil characters, or PVP actions. As you say, people should be aware of what the actual playing field even is. Otherwise the game is mismatched and mismanaged, as people are not even aware of what game they are playing (that is, whether they are playing a game of going into the dungeon and getting treasure, for example, or a game of It's A Dangerous World and trying to survive in a world that will always come at you). Ultimately any form of the game will be fine as long as people know that it exists and that they're playing it right now. One difficulty, though, is that for people who are totally new to the idea of something coming back to bite them, the idea that the world might actually be moving against them at any moment, it will be very difficult to actually internalize what that implies before someone is taken out in a way that feels like a sucker punch. I've actually spent some amount of time trying to discuss how to handle this with some fellow GMs. There is no easy answer, ultimately. Either you'll have to allow one "warning shot" situation, or possibly it will simply be a very painful lesson. Hard to say which works the best. I've heard some arguments that basically go that well, those things would not be something you can prepare for, since something like a thief or an assassin in town is supposed to be a secret danger. But that doesn't pan very far when you start to consider how ultimately you can justify just about anything and everything just entirely logically and plausibly killing and victimizing the PCs, and it would not be one bit less aggravating and unfair just because it *isn't* actually surreal and illogical in nature. Of course you all now have the Black Death, none of you told me you're washing your hands! You have all broken the sumptuary laws and will now be imprisoned for pretending to be nobility! It's all fine if people actually know that it is even a thing. Then they can make meaningful choices around the matter.
Does the city/settlement have adventure, in short? The more they start fighting, bumming, investigating and poking around in the city the less they're going to spend going around the greater region. The big theme in the Qelong campaign is war and disaster. There is no safe place. The region has one semi-safe starter town, and that is only safe as long as you can pay up. Everywhere you go you meet desperate people who could rob you of your armour when you sleep.
WFRP was all about diseases. A lot of their diseases were uncomfortable and demeaning but not necessarily lethal to the PCs. WFRP likes to debilitate and maim PCs, not kill them. A disease could make you groggy or make you stink up rooms or cause a lot of pain. One BRP game here had a monthly disease chance in urban centers, especially the slums. In case the PCs take an option to hide out in the slums during an adventure and get to struggle with how to find food and shelter.
@@SusCalvin Yeah. To be clear, I don't mean to say that a disease or other... let's say muddier issues like that couldn't be very good game content, merely that blindsiding people (like in the whole unfortunately not exactly fictional example of suddenly getting killed during your downtime in D&D with no understanding it could even happen) with any kind of issues will just cause a lot of frustration. If people basically know that it's part of the game they're getting into and part of the things to think about, it can be very central and meaningful, like in that BRP example.
@@goblinrat6119 I think you should avoid penalties and effects to the characters of absent players. This counts both in and out of town for me. If a player is absent in the wilderness or camping outside the dungeon, their PC is back at the base camp, happens to be foraging or something. For all purpouses they're doing downtime stuff like healing and working. Sometimes people intentionally play a secondary PC while their main PC sits through a bad wound. You can have great fun with a city campaign. Thieves' World fills the city with random nonsense you can respond to. I think you roll a random street encounter every 15 minutes, starting from when you step out the door. But then all your time will be spent on that city, there isn't even a system for generating a village or walking on the road outside Sanctuary. I don't know what would be a good "safety zone" in an urban game, where the city streets are the place of adventure. I like the idea of the PCs operating like a street gang or guard squad or gild with a cool headquarter. "Yeah, sir Bob isn't part of this raid. He's doing the ledgers at our hangout". I wouldn't want to tell them "You return and find sir Bob stabinated, with a rosette from the Hive." Sometimes things just happen. One player insisted on leaving their horse tied just outside the entrance of the dungeon. Poor horse did not survive the wildlife.
If town have random events you want good events , and no unavoidable loss rate. Losing 2D6 gold due to cards is fun, its flavour, getting auto killed a duel is not. Got changed to a duel at dawn? let players run off or bribe there way out, bring out the crit chart an see what it cost.
We found that once-a-month city events are fun. It should be a table of larger events that affect the city as a whole and the PCs only indirectly. A neighbouring city-state declares a war, a festival with games is announced, a type of goods is suddenly in short supply, a new law is decreed etc. The players have a lot more options if they want to engage with the event right on, just ride it out or try to avoid it.
Babe wake up new bandit’s keep video
😊
I ran a 12 session campaign in a town. The town was a dungeon, the inns were safe but boring, There were around 12ish areas of adventure that Players could find.
Naturally my players went to around 4 of them and it was alright.
Doing it again I would make a rough street map because I want to be able to describe the city better and let the Players get comfortable with it. I'd treat the streets like hallways and the notable locations like rooms.
I also had a nightmare urban jungle in the shadowfell where the Ranger got into guerilla warfare with monsters, and I thought that was pretty fun, especially since the panic when the Ranger realized the harpoons were being used to drag them off an edge they could fall off. Didn't happen (be generous) but the very idea of it put the fear of god into the Players.
Super fun, you can do some really neat stuff!
Nice
Yes! A town/city/hamlet adventure overview would be great!
Awesome
I ran a game for two years until Covid killed it out of a village named "Shademeadow."
It was a frontier village some 20 miles further along an ancient abandoned highway from the last Frontier city.
It was founded by a previous group of adventurers who defated a necromancer in a tower deep in the lost kingdom (that the highway led to)
It was the safe haven for the sandbox I created, but they had to travel to the city (two day round trip) to get any new items or spells beyond basic rationa or repairs.
It set up a great dynamic cause they were always a little nervous to go to the city cause the road was often harassed by hill giants, goblins, and harpies.
The biggest problem was that I made the NPC adventurers too interesting, and they always wanted to spend whole sessions role playing in the village and trying to get the old adventurers to come out and help them.
I really started to run thin on excuses and "duties running the village," and finally, I killed the Paladin NPC (heroically) when he assisted them with the Black Dragon mini boss. They (and the NPC party) were so devastated that they stopped harassing the NPCs to help them lmao
Oh man, yeah I could see that. I’ve definitely run settlements that become the adventure even though they were never meant to
Great vid Daniel, they keep getting better. I think building a town adventure would be fun! Thanks. I hope this channel grows quickly. You have a ton of great insight.
Thank You!
When you determine that a settlement exists in a particular location, and determine the general size, how many known buildings do you create (if any)? Or do you randomly determine if a given business or source of interest is present? Or do you create them based on the players inquiries and expressed interests?
Kinda all three.
I pretty much do so on a case by case basis.
5, two taverns and the rest are as need, the wizard tower, spider god keep, cult base an on.
Good question - I typically decide the size in population and then buildings based on the area it’s in and how wealthy. A poor village in the wood might have just a handful of buildings, where a rich village in the plains might have many.
@@BanditsKeep likewise, location may affect size ~ is it on the borderland, or in the heart of the kingdom? Is the borderland city larger (for self-preservation) or is it smaller because it's a new settlement?
I am a DM and I exclusively run published modules that I string together into a campaign. When I think about the settlements that I've read and run, the amount of detail presented is scaled to what the PCs are "expected" to do in that location. In Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Orlane is not a safe location. The Village of Homlet, is safe, or at least mostly. Same for the titular Keep from Keep on the Borderlands. The village of Saltmarsh (in the original), was almost 'sir not appearing in this film.' I think the village of Drellin's Ferry from Red Hand of Doom is a pretty well statted-out location. There's just enough shops to supply a party without going over the top. Then there are a string of villages that aren't quite "enough" -- enough people, shops, quest hooks, whatever. Phandalin, from Lost Mines of Flapdoodle, Albridge from Reavers of Harkenwold, Fairhill from Crucible of Freya.
For cities, I've run far less. (I suspect they are less popular to write and run, in part because of the cognitive load on the GM to manage a more complex environment.) I have run 2 examples of what I would call small cities: Brindol, from Red Hand of Doom, and Sasserine, from the Savage Tide adventure path. Again, both of these places had "content" prepped for the PCs to experience; it was part of the plot.
My biggest weakness, I think, as a DM is portraying NPCs to my players. Maybe it's a "chicken and egg" dynamic but my players rarely will interact with villagers and townspeople. They want/like their quest hooks straightforward and then it's on to combat. (Second biggest weakness is politics and multiple plot threads, but that's a complaint for a different time.)
I did a similar thing stringing modules in Hyperboria. As to the players not interacting with NPCs that is something I have rarely encountered. But it does seem like you are “handing out” the adventures so perhaps they don’t feel a need?
It’s always great to see one of your videos pop up on my feed. Thank you!
Thanks!
Love it. I'm starting to run a urban crawl kind of 'west marches style', where different parties go to explore the city each time we run. It's a low magic horror-pulp game on a mega city state like Constantinople of the late middle ages. The safe point is a tavern on the slum of the city, and they all start from there. It's a lot of fun. Last session two characters decided to heist the university to steal some things and faced a doppelganger of a dead professor.
I love that!
Some of my best sessions of my ongoing "sandbox"-ish campaign take place in towns and cities. This Sunday theyll be attending a noble wedding jn one of the major cities. They only met the bride to be when trying to pawn a fist sized ruby, and found her wealthy father was willing to buy it as part of the dowry. Since the bard in the larty was dtarting to make a name for herself as a musical performer, she was hired on as the wedding singer. A jealous ex, who just so happens to be a warlock with a penchant for poisons, will be making the wedding day adventure extra special.
Nice!
For large city adventures, consider safe districts functioning like villages, maybe from rep or alignment. In many ways you could even run a city adventure similar to wilderness, with smaller scale hexes and districts instead of biomes.
Really interesting video!
Thank You!
RE: adventuring in town. My current group has a borderland fortress town / small city as their current base of operations. When they first came into town I had the rogue spot some "rogue sign" markings on various locations (kinda like hobo markings, in Theives'cant). She was then able to make inquiries to get the "lay of the land" as far as the local gangs went. The Party of course made acquaintance with their innkeeper and learned about the businesses around the inn that provided services for visitors.
The religious and mage-types in the Party were made aware of the various temples, shrines, and schools, while the nature-types found out about the ranger & druid enclaves in the area.
Out of the dozen rumors I gave them, they chose to help a local temple that had uncovered some old catacombs during renovations.
There have also been some hints about a cult in the sewers, as well as an as-yet-unknown intelligence network operating in the city.
Sounds awesome
Another tasty topic!
One of the most relaxing and conversational DnD channels out there for sure.
Thank You!
Reminder: medieval Europe was TINY. A village was just where the workers lived who worked on a manor (a farm of about 1500 acres). They had about 100 people (always a blacksmith and a baker) & a church, no market. No walls; villagers ran to the fortified manor house. A hamlet was a small village with no church & probably worked a yeoman's land.
A town had 500 to 1500 people & walls & closed the gates at night. It had a charter to hold a market once or twice a week. There was no such thing as a “general store“. If you want shoes, go to a shoemaker. A nobleman's castle may be nearby.
A city was anything bigger than 2000 people and had the county sheriff and court of law. A noble castle was nearby. There's a market every day except holy days.
London was maybe 50k; the next three were 8 to 10k. Paris, Rome, & Constantinople were a few hundred thousand & a sewer system & cobblestone streets.
I purchased City State of the Invincible Overlord released by Necromancer Games 2004. It has a bunch of tables for city encounters. And I used these to seed my own random tables. Customizing the tables helps to drive the narrative you want to see develop. Thanks for the content.
Nice
Chris again. Another settlement I have is Chenoweth Falls (a Cornish word btw). If you remember the SiFi channel show Eureka, it was an obscure place full of mad geniuses. This is that sort of place. A walled in fishing town off a fjord where old adventurers have made their homes. A place where it’s best to have the ability of true seeing or true sight because everyone is spying on everyone else in some “form” (pun intended) or fashion. Lots of mid to high level intrigue!
Interesting
We ran town adventures back in the day because they were like dungeon adventures above ground: narrow streets that ran in all directions, two story structures with basements. And escape tunnels between buildings!
Nice! I’m always inspired by the city adventurers of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
I accidentally ran a city campaign once. I say "accidentally" in that I never intended for the vast majority of the campaign to take place in one city, but that's how it worked out.
That is the beauty of this game IMO
Thx for sharing!!
Thanks for watching
A city is a great place to introduce factions, politics and/or intrigue to a campaign. Otherwise, it's difficult to find a believable scenario where several powerful/influential figures [with competing agendas] would coexist that the players could encounter. And besides, where else would you find a thieves guild?
I'm keen on the Marienburg thieves guild from WFRP. The "thieves guild" is an internal joke. There are several street gangs with their own competing rackets. They have a mafia Commission-style group where the currently dominant gang heads meet to discuss the few shared issues they got, like division of turf without drawing city government attention. They still have cool places you can rob and fun people to run into but no central guildhall and fees and courses.
I think the thief green book had some discussion about how TSR thought a thief guild could operate in a fantasy world.
Indeed!
The old drunken troll who gets teased by the goblin gang in the woods nearby. Smart townsfolk give him what he wants and he leaves them alone. But those nasty goblins mean to nice old troll! Fun! Daniel you come up with great ideas! Love the inspiration!
It's either paying the troll or go back to paying the count's bailiff. And the bailiff took more for each wagon that passed.
Thank You!
my first TTRPG i ever played was pathfinder adventure card game (not the 3.5 hack). mechanically, it was a great intro to TTRPGs, and every scenario is a tiny sandbox where the major NPCs to deal with are all in different areas. That feeling of a living world stuck with me. When I design a town, there will be a web of interconnected in-town adventure hooks.
Very cool, I’ve never seen the card game, might be worth checking out
Hi Daniel, at 9:55 it feels like that should be a meme, or a t-shirt. "Do you want murder hobos? Because that's how you get murder hobos." 😄 Love watching your videos!
😂 perhaps that will be my next shirt
I used to use villages, towns and cities a fair bit as settings, sometimes between wilderness and dungeons with small 'side adventures' and from time to time as the base of the adventure. A merchant hires the out of town PC's to deal with the thieving from his warehouse, he doesn't want to risk his reputation as the thieves are luring rats there (yup, thiefly wererat alert !) while stealing his produce or they have to venture down to the sewers or the 'under city' that the current one was built on (Mary King's Close type stuff) and when they got to higher levels they get to know a smarter class of NPC's and get embroiled in their skulduggery and now the PC's are the ones worrying about their reputations. Most villages will have a hermit or midwife who can knock up simple cures (1-2 HP which at low levels is handy) and mild cures for poisons etc.
Each to their own but I got bored with constant dungeon bashing and preferred a bit of variety so assumed my players were the same so liked to mix it up a bit.
Thanks for taking the time to do the vids Daniel, I look forward to them.
Sounds cool
Towns are usually a centerpiece to my adventure zone. Initially they serve to equip and service the adventure party but as the campaign unfolds I can usually hook the party into something intriguing or emotionally involving as they get to know the different NPCs. You know, kill some wolves that are ripping the local's goat herd apart and it turns out to be a pack of werewolf nobles from the chateau on the outskirts of town, etc, etc... Also, I require my players to train in order to level up so getting to know the local mage or cleric, thief and fighter baron becomes a sort of mini game because the PCs will have to understudy for their next level. This is usually a good opportunity to get the party beholding to a NPC or two and quest on behalf of them as payment for training. All this stems from kicking around the local town or settlement and interacting with the locals. Great engines for driving a campaign for many sessions that seemingly materialize out of the ether all due to kicking around town.
That sounds fun!
Excellent video as always Daniel! I'm prepping for my first IRL campaign (been doing online campaigns up to this point), and your videos have been immensely useful. I am actually in the middle of building out my settlements, so this is awesome, gives me some stuff to chew on. Cheers!
Awesome, I hope you speak about it on your channel.
I use the old Judges Guild Campaign. And if you're talking major city, the City State of the Invincible Overlord is a place packed with adventure, intrigue and shops galore!
Even their "Wilderness" settings are packed with good stuff. You might find a city, village or castle that looks like a great place but if you listen to the rumors you will find things are different than they appear.
Nice
The hamlet or town with tavern and inn are classic hubs to explore forward into the wilderness and base from to delve dungeons. Here are all those helpful NPCs and the first encounters with the deeper antagonists who thread through the world. I like to start with a Beggar's Court, the 0 level theives and beggar children who can be helpful for rumors and lead to the higher level theives guild or the assassins guild in a bigger settlement. Some traders and craftsfolk, a local low level lord or his minion bailiff or sheriff. And that hamlet a full day walk from any other so it is isolated enough but connected to a wider world. All stuff I lifted from T1 and B2, just enough to see where things go and things to go after!
Nice
City/Town adventure yes! Please and thank you.
Will do
i would love to have to make a city adventure in a video!! great video!!
Thank You!
In my world there is a city similar to Constantinople. The West side is polite and cosmopolitan, the East side is a bit rough. Between the two is a bridge like the medieval London bridge. The players started on the bridge and went back and forth from end to end. They never left it. Each little pier was a village unto itself.
Nice
Would love to hear more about city adventures, starting a new campaign in a big city in December!
Cool, I’ll put that on the list
Yea, that would be great if you could create city adventures
I shall work on it
Nulb, Hommlet, Keep, Deep
Indeed
One of my groups played against a evil magic user who had some bandits over some streets.
Then they went to the sewers
Cool
Then there is Waterdeep Dragon Heist…
Fihner-The Home of Little Secrets is my current locale for the party. It began there as a starting point February 2020 with the Dwarf Barbarian having settled in this Halfling Village as their blacksmith. And now the party has returned to defend the village because there are two cults or brigand bands skulking around after an individual of the community of innocent farmers. At least that’s what the outside world thinks. The farmers are actually running a psychedelic mushrooms cottage industry that not even the players are aware. And no, that’s not what I had in mind for Fihner when I first started it. But let’s face it, a town often has a nefarious element in it. The question is, how many of the people are in on it?
In the 80s a fellow DM had a town that was all werewolves. Take that and run with it!
Interesting!
Geek chic baby! Everyone was coveted of my Dungeon Crawler black tee at my last game sesh. Hopefully I got you a couple of more sales.
I agree with you on the reason for the town in game and in the game world. It should indicate safety and a source for info & adventure hooks, especially when it borders the frontier/wilderness. A city adventure is something that should be set up from the beginning. I haven't run a city based adventure with d&d based games, but I ran a long Warhammer Fantasy RPG that took place in many major cities. But that's Warhammer and the setting, tone, and expectations are obvious. The players know they are gonna be down and out riff raff from the get go. They gotta get some coin (honestly or nefariously) if they want to stay in the nice side of the city where the watch actually cares.
Thanks! Ah yes, good point, some settings and systems have an almost baked in vibe the players will know
I would love a town adventure overview. As my next campaign is basically a kind of Jagged Alliance type of game where they are hired to take out (or get revenge on) a leader of some evil group (in this case a bandit king) that took control of the region, thou a small one. The main way this will happen is each settlement will be bigger and be more defended than the last. For example the first settlement will be a one map (or district) and a settlement will not be freed until the whole settlement is free from the bandit king's army. So any help with ideas or general advice is welcomed as the scale of the world will be new to me both in size and in complexly. As I hope not to have npc 3942 or whatever for the most part show up in game. At lest a name and a one or two world thing I could use as something to go off of when playing them.
That sounds like a fun campaign - I would create a few key high level figures, then concentrate on the first area - don’t try to build out everything up front, maybe just as sentence or two about each - that way you can adapt as the players do their thing
@@BanditsKeep Thanks for the advice. By key high level figures do you mean the first town mayor or like the bandit king himself? The Kingdoms around the region are pretty indifferent. This is due the region itself being not a part of any kingdom. New trade routes where made to go around the area that are much easier to maintain and quicker. On a side note there are some npcs that could help defend the settlements once a quest has been done to restore them to what they once where. Think a high level mage and warrior that where level drained and could not really fight anymore. Lastly at the moment this campaign is not even stared but is planed to be the next one my group does. So I have some time to set up a frame work of ideas on what to do.
Would be nice to see you do something easy to drop into a small crawl like a 5 room or 3 hex situation. Small community/ hamlet/small, med, large village sizes are optimal for this I think. Also perfect for introducing new players to your world.
I'm a fan of Raymond E. Fiest Magician series as a basic layout and arrangement for my world. Mostly just the general geography and world map, because it was great and saved me a lot of time and effort to make from scratch. It let's everyone know where the different races come from and what space in the world they occupy. Then I read the Elric sages and they became the back story for the dragon riders in Magician (not to mention how game of thrones completely ripped off M. M.'s Elric sages for a certain ancient civilization's back story and made tons of money from someone else's work).
Then I read the forgotten realms series and started using them as how the world worked now. That's where It's been for a long time in a first edition Advanced d&d setting. It's also sat there idle for a number of years too. I recently found your channel and have enjoyed going through your many videos. You have inspired me to dust off my old red & blue books and rethink my world again. I only played B/X for about a year before moving to Advanced. That was in 6th grade to 7th grade around 1982, 83. So I really didn't realize/ remember how much difference there was between the two. I was recently asked about teaching/ running a group of mostly new players and that fell apart before it got started more or less. It was a 5hr drive to start with then the new half of the group had to relocate due to work before we got together the next month. But I think I might look locally for a small group of 2-5 that can meet once a week or two instead of every other month. And maybe don't mind switching up who's DM so everyone gets to play.
Anyway sorry for the rambling love your outlook and style of play. So refreshing from the old power gaming style we used to run. Keep up the good work. Us gen X'ers have to stick together lol.
Thanks for sharing your world. I find a group that can meet more often tends to stay together longer, after a half dozen sessions it starts to become a habit vs the once a month event
Adventurers provide sone business to settlements, but also bring inflation with their hoards of coins.
Murderhobos might give a bad reputation to adventurers in general.
True!
I always find fascinating, how would someone think, that villagers would not have weapons on them in fantasy settings - bro there are goblins in nearby cavern, orcs in forrest and from time to time, Manticore fly by and much more. Economy is boosted due to magic - you would be a dumb villager, to not get your hands on some. In fact, your kingdom rulers would be dumb, to not get you some. + It's possible, that your village have a retired adventurer. The local cleric, hunter in the woods nearby is ranger, bartender might be an old bard who want some peace after all he went through.
If your players will get some settlement with people in it, get them weapons for freak sake, those goblin scums will not clear by themselves.
You are making assumptions about other DMs worlds - in my game monsters are rare and don’t fly over towns on the regular.
@@BanditsKeep you are right about that 👍 I wish I would left my part about general functioning of those words, without making assumptions about particular ones. Hope this two comments will get to the readers as well.
Just do it on a grand scale and cheese it up a bit. Like they do in a Japanese Anime. The town is built around the Dungeon Entrance. The entire economy is based on Adventurers bringing treasure up from the Dungeon. 😊
You can certainly do that, isn’t Waterdeep essentially that?
On the question of whether a settlement is fair game for danger, discussing that at the start of a campaign is essentially like negotiating the terms of the game in the first place, isn't it? The same as, say, discussing whether you want this campaign to have evil characters, or PVP actions. As you say, people should be aware of what the actual playing field even is. Otherwise the game is mismatched and mismanaged, as people are not even aware of what game they are playing (that is, whether they are playing a game of going into the dungeon and getting treasure, for example, or a game of It's A Dangerous World and trying to survive in a world that will always come at you).
Ultimately any form of the game will be fine as long as people know that it exists and that they're playing it right now. One difficulty, though, is that for people who are totally new to the idea of something coming back to bite them, the idea that the world might actually be moving against them at any moment, it will be very difficult to actually internalize what that implies before someone is taken out in a way that feels like a sucker punch. I've actually spent some amount of time trying to discuss how to handle this with some fellow GMs. There is no easy answer, ultimately. Either you'll have to allow one "warning shot" situation, or possibly it will simply be a very painful lesson. Hard to say which works the best.
I've heard some arguments that basically go that well, those things would not be something you can prepare for, since something like a thief or an assassin in town is supposed to be a secret danger. But that doesn't pan very far when you start to consider how ultimately you can justify just about anything and everything just entirely logically and plausibly killing and victimizing the PCs, and it would not be one bit less aggravating and unfair just because it *isn't* actually surreal and illogical in nature. Of course you all now have the Black Death, none of you told me you're washing your hands! You have all broken the sumptuary laws and will now be imprisoned for pretending to be nobility!
It's all fine if people actually know that it is even a thing. Then they can make meaningful choices around the matter.
Does the city/settlement have adventure, in short? The more they start fighting, bumming, investigating and poking around in the city the less they're going to spend going around the greater region.
The big theme in the Qelong campaign is war and disaster. There is no safe place. The region has one semi-safe starter town, and that is only safe as long as you can pay up. Everywhere you go you meet desperate people who could rob you of your armour when you sleep.
For sure - the ability to make meaningful choices is key
WFRP was all about diseases. A lot of their diseases were uncomfortable and demeaning but not necessarily lethal to the PCs. WFRP likes to debilitate and maim PCs, not kill them. A disease could make you groggy or make you stink up rooms or cause a lot of pain.
One BRP game here had a monthly disease chance in urban centers, especially the slums. In case the PCs take an option to hide out in the slums during an adventure and get to struggle with how to find food and shelter.
@@SusCalvin Yeah. To be clear, I don't mean to say that a disease or other... let's say muddier issues like that couldn't be very good game content, merely that blindsiding people (like in the whole unfortunately not exactly fictional example of suddenly getting killed during your downtime in D&D with no understanding it could even happen) with any kind of issues will just cause a lot of frustration.
If people basically know that it's part of the game they're getting into and part of the things to think about, it can be very central and meaningful, like in that BRP example.
@@goblinrat6119 I think you should avoid penalties and effects to the characters of absent players. This counts both in and out of town for me. If a player is absent in the wilderness or camping outside the dungeon, their PC is back at the base camp, happens to be foraging or something. For all purpouses they're doing downtime stuff like healing and working. Sometimes people intentionally play a secondary PC while their main PC sits through a bad wound.
You can have great fun with a city campaign. Thieves' World fills the city with random nonsense you can respond to. I think you roll a random street encounter every 15 minutes, starting from when you step out the door. But then all your time will be spent on that city, there isn't even a system for generating a village or walking on the road outside Sanctuary.
I don't know what would be a good "safety zone" in an urban game, where the city streets are the place of adventure. I like the idea of the PCs operating like a street gang or guard squad or gild with a cool headquarter. "Yeah, sir Bob isn't part of this raid. He's doing the ledgers at our hangout". I wouldn't want to tell them "You return and find sir Bob stabinated, with a rosette from the Hive."
Sometimes things just happen. One player insisted on leaving their horse tied just outside the entrance of the dungeon. Poor horse did not survive the wildlife.
Geeks = orcs
Nerds = mind flayers
😜
🤔
@@BanditsKeep Like, in 2023 jocks and bros can geek out and be into RPGs, but it's the _nerds_ who write the adventures 😅
If town have random events you want good events , and no unavoidable loss rate.
Losing 2D6 gold due to cards is fun, its flavour, getting auto killed a duel is not.
Got changed to a duel at dawn? let players run off or bribe there way out, bring out the crit chart an see what it cost.
We found that once-a-month city events are fun. It should be a table of larger events that affect the city as a whole and the PCs only indirectly. A neighbouring city-state declares a war, a festival with games is announced, a type of goods is suddenly in short supply, a new law is decreed etc. The players have a lot more options if they want to engage with the event right on, just ride it out or try to avoid it.
Indeed
Why are geeks and nerds cool but not dweebs?
That is the real question