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The idea of a ultralopolis built by air, fire, Earth & water elemental monarchy in which the goal is to fuse the elements into a paradise......would it be a tropically shaded paradise of crystals? 🙃
19:00 minutes in about ripping off travel guides, I use the magazine " Better Homes & Gardens," and other house floor plane magazines to run haunted houses with. Or front door to back doors from one house to another to create mega dungeons with.
I like the idea of "roll a different die type for each faction, and see which numbers match", but if I was going to implement it, I would be tempted to reverse the order of die types. Powerful factions (government, powerful temples, primary mercantile concerns, etc.) get a d4, while less consequential factions (street gangs, minor guilds, etc.) get higher die types. This reflects the fact that the movers and shakers of the city interact with great frequency, while those of less import are less likely to rub up against other factions.
It seems like Web DM comes out with content just as I need help with the exact point they are discussing. This is by far my favorite channel for improving my games as a DM.
@@dallenmeche6587 thanks for the reply, Matt is also great. His most recent video on when to say no is a breath of fresh air. It was nice to have someone with his experience and clout acknowledge that it is ok for the DM to push back against player ideas and ask for compromise when those ideas would significantly alter the tone, world, or plot of the game.
I’ve listened to this on the Patreon podcast three times. One of the best conversations I’ve listened to on D&D in a while. Or maybe I just want to focus on urban campaigns more lately. It’s a very good discussion.
I recommend cool names for the districts. Instead of the "Mages District." You could call it something like "The Sonorous Spires." and have it be a bunch of stone shaped spires formed by Geomancers. Or instead of the "Market District." call it "The Gildstreets." so named because of the sheer amount of money that changes hands each day. Cool district names make for more interesting cities, they give em some character.
It was mentioned in a previous episode when they were talking about a city they built inside of a dead God and I think they also mention Guardians of the Galaxy
When you mentioned a bar for wizards, the name that popped into my head was The Wipsy Tizard. Now I want to make a counselor sphinx that gives advice on people's problems. I liked Pruitt's suggestion of joining a fight out of spite for one party and not specifically to help the other. Great advice and tips, as always.
I love building the city through many sessions as the PCs make allies and enemies, require services, hear rumors or need to seek out information or items. But, even more than building the city, I love it when the adventurers make contacts with NPCs and have an effect on the city with regards to business or politics. Great conversation, as always. Well done!
@@josiebianchi3481 I share nothing online I dont want stolen. By all means use it! In my current game the party has one of the Flowers with them, the dice have consistently determined that she isn't great in combat but with 20 cha, Actor and specialization in deception and performance shes a brutal infiltrator (they may get to use her soon lol)
"Welcome to the five courts of assassins." He gestures to the chairs assembled around a circular table. "There sits the lord of blades, there's the lord of arrows, and there sits the maiden of flowers. Next to her is the seat that bears the lady of snakes, and there..." He stops at the last seat. "Well. We don't really associate much with the lord of the barbed phallus."
I am surprised it got to 36:00 before sewage was discussed. That is where I begin all city development. City builders. D&D. War. Everything is based upon food intake and outtake. No food. no persons. no sewers. no food. Just like Irl, always make friends with the people serving your food and those cleaning it up after you. because they hear everything as near invisible entities in society. The Honeydipper was a lucrative business in medieval times. Separating uric acids and human fertilizer for their various purposes. Preservatives such as alcohol, salts, ammonia all can be acquired utilizing human urine. You can make leathers and dyes. And then obviously the seeds pregerminated from yesterday's lunch fueled the beginnings of the science of botany. Nitrogen for soils... And if you let it sit and rot you get all sorts of plagues and disease outbreaks that could render the Cleric structure of your city overwhelmed...and now I somehow made it back to 2020. sorry guys.
As for Travel Guides, I wanted a city that was atop a plateau. I did some googling and found "Civita di Bagnoregio" in Italy and fell in love with the layout. The city is gorgeous. It's a HEAVY tourist destination. I yoinked down the maps and rough ideas of what buildings were what and have been using it for the last three sessions. It's got all these cool narrow winding roads and has this "old village" feel to it. Go to Google Street view and look around the town, it's amazing.
Guys, I just want to say that I've yet to see a video of yours that I didn't enjoy thoroughly! These longer ones are definitely my favorite. I'm a trucker and y'all keep my (probably) ADD brain sane on the long runs that make up my job. Míle buíochas!
Here's a quick map mking trick I learned that can scale up to a city: 1) draw a tic tac toe board, 2) draw a Tetris piece in the middle of each of the 9 squares, these are your 9 encounter locations. Now add one more tetris piece in any square you want that is your boss battle location. 3) draw the 'correct' path that leads from the starting point to the boss battle, this is your 'main path'. Make dead connections off the main path to make sure characters can reach each location and some will be dead ends. 4) Skin, scale and describe as appropriate.
Holy shit, the discussion of the firefighter factions being the ones involved in the conflict, but their patrons have only a vested interest in their success, made me imagine it as a kind of cold war. You can just keep zooming out, faction by faction, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, nation by nation, and you'll find the same interplay of power politics being acted out on a larger and larger scale. Those who are involved in a conflict, and those who have a vested interest in each side's success.
I, myself, am a new DM trying to find some players and time to play; but I must say WebDM has been an absolute gift for me with helping me out. I consider you guys to be an essential channel to follow. Thanks for all the help guys! Y'all are awesome!!
This is such perfect timing for me. Wrapping up the intro arc for my players right now, and its mostly been on rails. When we resume after the holidays, I'm taking the rails off after they're sent to the major capital of our world. So. this. helps. THANK YOU
@@WebDM loved it. Comparing it to human anatomy helps a lot. My custom world is based on the colonial philippines, so there's a lot here to lend to the idea of districts and the coming and going of different groups, migrant workers, etc. My players are dealing with the spread of a magical disease, so this helps me question how will that work in crowded areas, what conflicts come up between the districts and social classes? It also helped me link how this can connect to an arc after this- what outside forces are influencing politics and unrest in the city? Do the players venture out to deal with that, or do they hunker down and deal with the immediate problems? We'll see soon enough! Thank you so much for your content!
I LOVE real cities with the serial numbers off. I have one party in New Orleans (with a hill based on Geneva's old city), another in Aberdeen, and I regularly use Grado and Venice as locations. At some point, I'll need to put up an adventure in Kinshasa, which has wild looking geography if you ever get to visit.
My favorite method for Creating a quick random city is draw the shape you want square circle ect. Pick a general theme so commerce capital small ect. Grab dice assigned ideas to different colors so greens are temples red is criminal establishment. Blue is political ect. Number of dice indicated a how strong or powerful a given location might be. So a 1 green is maybe a minor cleric feeding the people. While a 12 is the main temple of a god ect. Generates a good scope for a city pretty quickly
WAIT, I THOUGHT THIS WAS AN OLD EPISODE I was literally JUST researching medieval Italian city-states (Venice specfically) and got this as a suggestion and thought I had definitely seen it before but a refresher would be great. But holy crap, what perfect timing lmao
This is a great video... I tend to run high exploration games around my world, but I am finally running a campaign that focuses solely around a large city and the advice of this video has been immensely helpful
The PERFECT episode for my game tonight! 6 games into a magical noir mystery homebrew game set in a Silverymoon that I've fleshed out and mapped into distinct districts and neighborhoods, all with a mapped-out political and economic structure that can be seen and interacted with, set a few centuries past the contemporary timeline where advanced arcana-powered technology has only just begun to flourish in Faerun. Giving my players a lot of depth for their characters and their stories that are woven into the settlement and surrounding area and they are diving right in! And you guys are always in my ear during prep sessions! Thanks for all you do!
I just recently shared this with my buddy who is running an OWoD Dark Ages, Masquerade game. Tons of good information here. I like how y'all focus on the "why" the city is there; it's essentially a story element, or as y'all say, it's almost a Character in and of itself.
Some ideas on campaigns in The Big City: Develop a make-sense table for your PCs who will INEVITABLY say: "I duck down an alleyway." As a DM, that is a big challenge in a city, actually. What if there are NO nearby alleys? Is your map going to be so detailed as to include them? If no alleys, what do the residents do with their garbage, etc.? Have a "I duck down" table for each city district, if necessary. Trust me - it really helps and adds some randomness for you to enjoy as a DM. And of course, for a good DM, any challenge is an opportunity. How about the PC ducks into an alley, and randomly triggers ANOTHER encounter? Two encounters at once? Also be ready for your PC's to open doors and climb walls. Do people leave their doors open? Locked? What about windows? Which buildings have balconies? Hanging laundry? Are there foot bridges? Climbable drainage pipes?
One of the major cities in my D&D world is called the Blue Coast. I created it in a game called Kingdoms and Castles. It's a nice little game for building cities and it's about $15 on Steam. I recommend it for anyone who wants a fun way to build a city and doesn't want to do a lot of work. Another perk to the game is it has randomly generated names for all the people living in it, so you can just use that if you want to! It definitely helped me a good deal in my last game I ran.
Super useful... currently 3 sessions in to running a long term campaign, and while I had bullet pointed landmarks/important areas, the layout was a huge mess. Still struggling with scale/mapping, but just hearing other humans mention their ideas helped spark a lot of the organizational stuff, districts and so-on. Thanks!
I am about to run an Urban game, and it will be my first time DMing a full adventure. I had really hit a low point in my writing and afraid I was going to have to scrap the idea. Thanks to this and the Mystery videos, I'm back on track and more excited than ever. The long-form content is really helpful.
This is a wonderful topic that intersects with things I have going on in my current campaign. I love the content you all are putting out. I've been a long time listener but finally joined your Patreon just as soon as I could afford to. Keep rocking.
Oooh nice to hear my hometown get a shout out! But yeah, it makes it very difficult to make old medieval streets sound exotic and interesting when all my players are from York too!
Faction interaction dice, I like that. As far as wilderness factions, it makes me think of fortresses of colonizing soldiers, indigenous tribes, wizards and/or hags working and living in secret (unbeknownst to the soldiers and tribes), underground civilizations, goblin caves, kobold caves... including a sort of civilization vs. wilderness campaign where the player characters ran afoul of the law trying to get some spicy dirt on the local colony lords, and got ran out of town, but were already established enough to get enough footing with the help of the most relevant wilderness faction. This can be like a part gold rush, part 'psuedo' revolutionary war... part... Weird West pioneer campaign, but with DnD monsters, an Underdark, and other planes of existence.
I'll never forget when my DM running Out of the Abyss told us about a "Deep Gnome City" and I instinctively said "WE DEEP GNOME CITY. WE DEEP GNOME CITY ON ROCK AND ROLLLLLL"
I think I may have made some of my cities too interesting. Players are like, "We will stay here" it has kinda turned into a urban campaigne. Im running more of a "sandbox" game.
As someone running an urban campaign (For two different groups!) this is good. I've already had Wintercrest as a working city for a long time and I love it
Geezer here.... LOL.. That intro described my settings greatest city to a tee. Basically its a human colony/arcology that was indeed built with earth elementals, magic and yes bards are key. They kept the colonists from going looney tuns along the way. Game on.
@@leem4386 Thanks for the encouragement. It seems everyone is interested in broken/dark world dystopia these days. I think a mega city with almost uncharted wilderness a few weeks away will provide more than ample opportunity for adventures.
Great info! A city needs the guild/city council (same guys), bailiff (not mayor), county sheriff (constable in a town), county judge, arms merchant, & a few inns and taverns, plus a bad guy of some sort. Magic items should only be bought & sold thru a special dealer who is maybe only in the capital city. No public library, but maybe a sage, scribe, or priest with a few books. And a coroner.
I'm only half way through but so far I'm finding this video very inspiring. I apologize if you guys already talk about it later in this video, but I would love some ideas for where and how to start a campaign in a city instead of in a small town which is what a lot of people tend to suggest.
I think this is now one of my favorite Web DM videos. And boy, do I think one could make a great worldbuilding game out of this. Think Microscope, but with rules focused on City Building and the City's History.
I'm running an Exandira campaign (explorer's guide to wildemount but a different continent), and I made a city that was an enclave/floating city that went into hiding before the calamity. Think a city of mages & clerics in a huge cave under a mountain. But its upside down because the mountain itself was the flying city (proctiv's move mountain esque)
Watching this is making me want to design a campaign and city where each district is built around a school of magic, and each district is capped by a tower in the inner ring of the city that houses that guild's arch mage...
21:18 "Sweet basilisk meats and cockatrice hot wings" That is why we play this game, folks. Edit: All organic basilisk meats with no added artificial basil.
In my cities, I usually assign each shop a want or need on the fly. Like the potion master wants some giant clippings for something he is working on. Or the trinket shop, is need of large ocean shells to sell. Or the black smith is trying to work on something magical, but needs a patron to Sponsor it. Or the seamstress is looking for a particular silk. I’ve always felt that you can build a cool city lay out, cities by volcanoes, or sky fall cities, but it’s the people inside it that make it memorable, the settings just makes it a bit intriguing. I also believe that players that explore within the confides of DM knowledge always have more appealing games, versus just trying to wonder for wondering sake. But ya my cities for the most part are mapped out and usually I only have about 5 cities in an entire world because the are darn hard to create.
One of the most useful questions you can ask to make a city feel believable is "why was this city built here?" You can come at it from a lot of directions too. You can start with a place and develop a purpose, or start with a theme and flesh out its surroundings. Might be for trade, maybe agriculture, maybe strategic defense, or religious significance, but people always settle in a specific location for a specific reason. The city doesn't even need to actively serve its original purpose either, it could be an ancient city from a long dead culture that has been settled again,
An excellent resource for how specific guilds can is the Livery Companies of London. There's 110 of them including separate ones for Wax Chandlers and Tallow Chandlers.
The handful of locations advice is so profoundly important that it really is the basis for all you need when running a city campaign. I like to take it one step further. Pick a tv show you want to base the overall tone of your campaign on. Then pick the five or six major locations that show up over and over on that show. Start writing down combat and non combat encounters that can happen in each of those places. Marvel's hell's kitchen shows = courthouse, abandoned building, enemy faction's drug filled warehouse, police department, dive bar. Law and Order = courthouse, docks, loading bay of a trucking company, fish/butcher's or other outdoor market, police department, back alleys, CEO's office, boutique or high end gallery business. Buffy the vampire slayer = nightclub, back alleys, sewers/caves, graveyards (have 5 or 6 of these alone), abandoned warhouse/factory, gothic mansion, school. Once you have your main locations and about 10 to 20 events for those locations you then have enough random encounter tables to fill in the gaps between whatever over arching plot you want to throw at the party.
I tend to build up from world laws to world shape to natural systems to life to sentience and then build my cities from stone one up, simulating the groups and individuals until i have everyone’s history and such... but thats a very in depth and slow way to do things X-p i do like the anatomy idea and the travel guide idea... using those together might allow for a pretty quick and easy mix and match system to be makeable.
The first thing I define with any city in a campaign is: Why is it here. What function does this population center have in the campaign. Is it a hub of travel or trade? Is it an transition point? A major port or the point where a highway meets a border? Is it an industrial center? The hub of a region full of precious metal or gemstone production? Why are these people gathered in this place and what is the focus of their lives? There should be no generic cities, each should have their own character and you should feel that purpose in everything that happens in that City. Yes this town has great brothels and a market where you can buy just about everything but what makes it different from the other half-dozen cities in the game? I also write a solid paragraph about how this city came to be and what it's endured in it's history. This is what ties this city to the world in a way that makes sense. Next I define the rulership of the City, not always the Noble that rules the area but the decision makers that regulate the market and abdicate the rules. Are they skilled? Incompetent? Are things getting better or worse for their efforts? Are they draconian? Or skeezy? Do they hire subordinates that are competent or those that tend to kiss their ass? This is how I determine how the city acts around the players. Next what features are unique about this city? Are there crafts or goods that are very cheap here? Are there aspects of the city that are restricted to a specific caste? Is the city divided unusually with travel restrictions? Is there an underground for light-sensitive creatures? Are there racial slums? Are there districts dedicated to industry like the Fishing Docks or the cloth dying district? Are the town guard magically powerful or able to detect lies or any other unusual feature? If my players go a few months without visiting this town and it comes up in the campaign again these are the things my players should be reminded of about this city. Next I identify locations players will be interested in. There may be a dozen taverns in a large city but there's only two that matter to the players, The info tavern and the party tavern. There's going to be one tavern or tea shop or squid-fry restaurant where the bartender has quiet conversations with patrons or that shadowy finger holds office in a corner, where you go to for news or information. And you need the big drinking hall where Bards are always in line to play with the cute flirty bar maids and the perpetually happy bartender. The prices are high here but the food is AMAZING. You can't afford this place when you're scraping and when you hit it big this is your first stop. This is where you meet your rich patron or quest giver. I always have a land-mark type location that makes the city district, a fighting pit, or a market district for magic items and it always goes back to that purpose of the city, this isn't a defining feature of the city but something defined by it, a thing that couldn't be anywhere else in the world. And I'll have something like this in just about every town or hamlet. Players like something like this that's a hand-hold for remembering locations. I usually put a unique "character" shop in any settlement in my game. Just a named-shop that has a little more character than others and sells something cool the players may want. Every location in a setting always has an named NPC with some character written in and ideally some abstract motivation for what they want and what might motivate them beyond just their business or posting. Lastly I create a cast of characters that will make your visit to the city more fun, bawds, harlots, fops, bullies, theives. I always define the guard captain because my players will always have a run-in with the law. I do my best to make these characters unique. These characters should be invested in the city, involved with a larger organization, not random agents. So if the players have conflict with them, it's not just someone they beat up, it's a conflict they have to deal with in the city. These characters may have plot hooks or just moving motivations that would encourage them to work for or against the players.
I guess I should have expected a Starship reference from the guy running the Spelljammer game. Also, and I know no one asked, the game Godbound has a free version on DrivethruRPG, and it includes somereally useful charts for building noble courts, crimminal organizations, and governmental bureaucracies that help you identify who the primary power players are in any organization that the PCs might have to deal with, as well as important but less powerful NPCs. Great stuff for city building!
I have a concept of city cleaning being done by an army of wizard apprentices with prestidigitation. As they study, they learn more, and finally take on their own apprentice to teach prestidigitation to, freeing them from having to clean the city an hour every day.
Talk about timing. I was pondering all last night about a city-based campaign, and when I went to start writing, BOOM this video appeared from the ether.
Putting some stuff together here's an idea: A Major Questgiver NPC is a high level magic user who pays the characters to hunt monsters and bring them back soe alive, some dead. The mage of course uses the bodies as components in spells and potions. AND the age also runs a restaurant, where they cook up and serve all the non-magical parts of the beast, and they sell its manure to be used to make magical crops. The characters get paid in gold, food, and potions that probably work.
Some of the best tools to build cities that you probably already own: 1. The Guild Artisan background in the Player’s Handbook has a d20 list of professions. Use this to create a bunch of shops. 2. The group patrons chapter in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Mine this chapter for the "powers that be" in the city. Then determine how the powers compete with each other.
I had an amazing campaign idea. Well 2 that go together but one that specifically relates to this video. The first was an aquatic, seafaring campaign. A world of ocean, islands, and archipelagos. But I plan on having a background mystery. A massive island, near continent size (though the current inhabitants only know the term through old stories before the flood), that is surrounded and hidden by a veritable labyrinth of mountainous islands, volcanoes and whirlpools and if they ventured far enough in, protected by a massive force field. If the campaign gets to grindy/dreadful/boring or if they finish the main story, whichever comes first, I plan on having a major event drop the shield and have the story lead to the island, a massive city of magitek marvels and secrets. A megadungeon that also served as a city, and thus needs to be planned as such. Worse comes to worse I just stick with having the city portion be a completely separate campaign and just rebalance the levels to start earlier. I plan on having the players expand into the city as NPCs eventually settle further inwards, having to contend with rival factions, the world-spanning Thalassocracy, and the city's own defense systems (and possible residents of unknown origin?) I got the idea for the city based on Alexander from Final Fantasy, specifically FFXIV as its lore states it was meant to be a massive city for the intelligencia to live and travel in. In the raids we got to see some of the city, but much of the exploration was in the inner-workings, legs and reactors and such. I plan on having the city itself be both inside and out the structure of the great robot, with the immediate goal being to reach the center of the city's outside, as it's believed to be the capitol building, where items of import are thought to be stored. As the defense mechanism were activated centuries ago and segregated the various sections and rings of the city, they have to crawl their way through the city and discover what still remains. And this vid will be a great way to figure out how to fully flesh out city streets and figure out what kinds of loot, locations, and items of significance could be found! As well as where people who come settle the city would want to set up. Plus it'll help me figure out how to populate the islands in the first campaign so even if my rather grandiose plans falter, I can still make that first campaign go over smoothly in terms of having cool locals.
We actually have a similar thing right now! except we're the players and we were given a starting settlement by Mordekeinen, on account of being mid ranking members of his organization. My evocation wizard has a backstory with the elementals and does conjury as a secondary profession, and plans on binding elementals for services within the city, for now mostly mining and construction via earth elementals.
@@jemm113 the game I'm a player in, we've been slowly building up an abandoned town that has a green dragon juvenile in it. We're not growing too quickly, I think. I'm unsure. It's from, I like it a lot.
Having played a game in sigil. It's rough to try and Improv in a city. If you've planned and you know the basics of how your city should work and what the districts mean you can do it. But the more you plan the more you will be rewarded
Thank you for watching! Use the code WEBDM and get 10% off an annual premium Dungeon Fog subscription! Click: www.dungeonfog.com/webdm/ Help us Make the Show and Get WAY MORE: patreon.com/webdm
The idea of a ultralopolis built by air, fire, Earth & water elemental monarchy in which the goal is to fuse the elements into a paradise......would it be a tropically shaded paradise of crystals? 🙃
19:00 minutes in about ripping off travel guides, I use the magazine " Better Homes & Gardens," and other house floor plane magazines to run haunted houses with. Or front door to back doors from one house to another to create mega dungeons with.
I like the idea of "roll a different die type for each faction, and see which numbers match", but if I was going to implement it, I would be tempted to reverse the order of die types. Powerful factions (government, powerful temples, primary mercantile concerns, etc.) get a d4, while less consequential factions (street gangs, minor guilds, etc.) get higher die types. This reflects the fact that the movers and shakers of the city interact with great frequency, while those of less import are less likely to rub up against other factions.
I love this implementation.
Yoink.
"We built this city of D6 rolls!"
Oh that's good too!
XD lolol
Or with how most of my groups go:
“We built this city on nat. One. Rolls!”
@@ConnorSinclairCavin see this is a good one the others were cringe 😂
@@garrettvise4732 thx for reminding me of this, i wanted to do the full song as a city’s theme
It seems like Web DM comes out with content just as I need help with the exact point they are discussing. This is by far my favorite channel for improving my games as a DM.
Thank you so much Sean!
This is awesome and great. You should try Matthew colville too.
@@dallenmeche6587 thanks for the reply, Matt is also great. His most recent video on when to say no is a breath of fresh air. It was nice to have someone with his experience and clout acknowledge that it is ok for the DM to push back against player ideas and ask for compromise when those ideas would significantly alter the tone, world, or plot of the game.
Let's test this. For next week, you *really* need help picking winning lottery numbers... ;)
i'm literally in the process of trying to build a city for my session in 6 hours, lol. time to watch
Perfect!
Same boat
I'm building a city that may or may not be the entire campaign setting for my next campaign.
dont forget the continual flame street lights :-P
My players are two sessions away from making it to the main city of my homebrew campaign. This timing saved a lot of us lol🙏🏼
I’ve listened to this on the Patreon podcast three times. One of the best conversations I’ve listened to on D&D in a while. Or maybe I just want to focus on urban campaigns more lately. It’s a very good discussion.
Thank you Jeff!
As soon as I read the title my brain said “on rock and roll” I’m so glad y’all used that in the intro, you are definitely my people lol
Welcome
I recommend cool names for the districts.
Instead of the "Mages District." You could call it something like "The Sonorous Spires." and have it be a bunch of stone shaped spires formed by Geomancers.
Or instead of the "Market District." call it "The Gildstreets." so named because of the sheer amount of money that changes hands each day.
Cool district names make for more interesting cities, they give em some character.
For Jim's question about a body that is a city, I kept thinking about 2001 Osmosis Jones and waiting for it to be mentioned, but it never was.
I was thinking of Pathologic, but nice reference. I loved Osmosis Jones as a kid.
It was mentioned in a previous episode when they were talking about a city they built inside of a dead God and I think they also mention Guardians of the Galaxy
That intro joke put a smile on my face.
''Built this city on rock and ro-ooooool''
So such a cheesy joke it borders on genius.
When you mentioned a bar for wizards, the name that popped into my head was The Wipsy Tizard.
Now I want to make a counselor sphinx that gives advice on people's problems.
I liked Pruitt's suggestion of joining a fight out of spite for one party and not specifically to help the other.
Great advice and tips, as always.
Nice
I enjoyed the idea of Cockatrice beak soup, I seem to recall a story about stone soup I read somewhere...
I love building the city through many sessions as the PCs make allies and enemies, require services, hear rumors or need to seek out information or items. But, even more than building the city, I love it when the adventurers make contacts with NPCs and have an effect on the city with regards to business or politics. Great conversation, as always. Well done!
Thanks Wally!
My Assassin's Guild has internal "Courts" based on their preferred methods. The Blades, the Flowers, the Arrows, and a few others
cool so i'm stealing that idea, it's going right into my games, because that is one of the coolest things I've ever read
@@josiebianchi3481 I share nothing online I dont want stolen. By all means use it! In my current game the party has one of the Flowers with them, the dice have consistently determined that she isn't great in combat but with 20 cha, Actor and specialization in deception and performance shes a brutal infiltrator (they may get to use her soon lol)
@@vallynblackleaf u should think about contribution to the whole community, they help GMs like us (younger and unwise) to become better ;)
"Welcome to the five courts of assassins." He gestures to the chairs assembled around a circular table. "There sits the lord of blades, there's the lord of arrows, and there sits the maiden of flowers. Next to her is the seat that bears the lady of snakes, and there..." He stops at the last seat. "Well. We don't really associate much with the lord of the barbed phallus."
@@greylithwolf "Wouldn't that just be a mace?"
"No, no. See, he also sometimes goes by The Lord of Gerbles."
26:05, “The Dogmatic Temple of Aughra”.... did Pruitt just drop a Dark Crystal reference? Solid.
I am surprised it got to 36:00 before sewage was discussed.
That is where I begin all city development. City builders. D&D. War. Everything is based upon food intake and outtake. No food. no persons. no sewers. no food.
Just like Irl, always make friends with the people serving your food and those cleaning it up after you. because they hear everything as near invisible entities in society.
The Honeydipper was a lucrative business in medieval times. Separating uric acids and human fertilizer for their various purposes.
Preservatives such as alcohol, salts, ammonia all can be acquired utilizing human urine. You can make leathers and dyes.
And then obviously the seeds pregerminated from yesterday's lunch fueled the beginnings of the science of botany. Nitrogen for soils...
And if you let it sit and rot you get all sorts of plagues and disease outbreaks that could render the Cleric structure of your city overwhelmed...and now I somehow made it back to 2020. sorry guys.
Guess I have to watch a bunch of Web DM again :D
As for Travel Guides, I wanted a city that was atop a plateau. I did some googling and found "Civita di Bagnoregio" in Italy and fell in love with the layout. The city is gorgeous. It's a HEAVY tourist destination.
I yoinked down the maps and rough ideas of what buildings were what and have been using it for the last three sessions. It's got all these cool narrow winding roads and has this "old village" feel to it. Go to Google Street view and look around the town, it's amazing.
You're always right on the pulse of what my group is up to and are constantly saving my hams with tips 😅. Love Web DM Wednesday.
Glad to help save hams!
Guys, I just want to say that I've yet to see a video of yours that I didn't enjoy thoroughly! These longer ones are definitely my favorite. I'm a trucker and y'all keep my (probably) ADD brain sane on the long runs that make up my job. Míle buíochas!
I've been meaning to flesh out some of the cities in my homebrew world. This video has given me a lot to think about. Thank you.
Here's a quick map mking trick I learned that can scale up to a city: 1) draw a tic tac toe board, 2) draw a Tetris piece in the middle of each of the 9 squares, these are your 9 encounter locations. Now add one more tetris piece in any square you want that is your boss battle location. 3) draw the 'correct' path that leads from the starting point to the boss battle, this is your 'main path'. Make dead connections off the main path to make sure characters can reach each location and some will be dead ends. 4) Skin, scale and describe as appropriate.
Holy shit, the discussion of the firefighter factions being the ones involved in the conflict, but their patrons have only a vested interest in their success, made me imagine it as a kind of cold war. You can just keep zooming out, faction by faction, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, nation by nation, and you'll find the same interplay of power politics being acted out on a larger and larger scale. Those who are involved in a conflict, and those who have a vested interest in each side's success.
I never watched a better more entertaining and knowledgeable D&D channel than Web DM. Thank you guys for all the videos you make.
I need to make sure I have a notepad available everytime I watch your videos. Even just some of your throwaway ideas I think sound very fun
As a person of Budapest I really appreciate you pronounced it the right way! Thank you :)
A brand new Web DM episode, what a perfect birthday gift! Thank you guys for all that you do!
Happy birthday!!!!
@@WebDM Thank you so much!
I've wanted this episode for six months. Thanks so much!
Great video as per usual! Glad you mentioned Blades in the dark, it really is a master class city/faction game.
That dwarf pirate city sounds so coool! I wanna live there :)
This is good stuff, im off to write my book, i will take advantage from these advices, you guys are the best!
Thanks for the kind words!
I, myself, am a new DM trying to find some players and time to play; but I must say WebDM has been an absolute gift for me with helping me out. I consider you guys to be an essential channel to follow. Thanks for all the help guys! Y'all are awesome!!
I'm always obsessed with pure urban campaigns! Doing Waterdeep, Dragon heist right now!
This is such perfect timing for me. Wrapping up the intro arc for my players right now, and its mostly been on rails. When we resume after the holidays, I'm taking the rails off after they're sent to the major capital of our world. So. this. helps. THANK YOU
Awesome!! Tell us what you think
@@WebDM loved it. Comparing it to human anatomy helps a lot. My custom world is based on the colonial philippines, so there's a lot here to lend to the idea of districts and the coming and going of different groups, migrant workers, etc. My players are dealing with the spread of a magical disease, so this helps me question how will that work in crowded areas, what conflicts come up between the districts and social classes? It also helped me link how this can connect to an arc after this- what outside forces are influencing politics and unrest in the city? Do the players venture out to deal with that, or do they hunker down and deal with the immediate problems? We'll see soon enough! Thank you so much for your content!
Thank you so much for this video, a huge help as a new DM building a city. I love the dung Gnomes lol
I love the opening skits lmao
I LOVE real cities with the serial numbers off. I have one party in New Orleans (with a hill based on Geneva's old city), another in Aberdeen, and I regularly use Grado and Venice as locations. At some point, I'll need to put up an adventure in Kinshasa, which has wild looking geography if you ever get to visit.
My favorite method for Creating a quick random city is draw the shape you want square circle ect. Pick a general theme so commerce capital small ect. Grab dice assigned ideas to different colors so greens are temples red is criminal establishment. Blue is political ect. Number of dice indicated a how strong or powerful a given location might be. So a 1 green is maybe a minor cleric feeding the people. While a 12 is the main temple of a god ect. Generates a good scope for a city pretty quickly
WAIT, I THOUGHT THIS WAS AN OLD EPISODE
I was literally JUST researching medieval Italian city-states (Venice specfically) and got this as a suggestion and thought I had definitely seen it before but a refresher would be great.
But holy crap, what perfect timing lmao
This is a great video... I tend to run high exploration games around my world, but I am finally running a campaign that focuses solely around a large city and the advice of this video has been immensely helpful
The PERFECT episode for my game tonight! 6 games into a magical noir mystery homebrew game set in a Silverymoon that I've fleshed out and mapped into distinct districts and neighborhoods, all with a mapped-out political and economic structure that can be seen and interacted with, set a few centuries past the contemporary timeline where advanced arcana-powered technology has only just begun to flourish in Faerun. Giving my players a lot of depth for their characters and their stories that are woven into the settlement and surrounding area and they are diving right in! And you guys are always in my ear during prep sessions! Thanks for all you do!
Thank you Anderson!
I just recently shared this with my buddy who is running an OWoD Dark Ages, Masquerade game. Tons of good information here. I like how y'all focus on the "why" the city is there; it's essentially a story element, or as y'all say, it's almost a Character in and of itself.
Perfect timing! I am starting a new campaign and it is my first "non-rails" campaign. I was looking for info on how to handle cities. Thanks, guys! =)
Glad to help, Blaine!
Some ideas on campaigns in The Big City:
Develop a make-sense table for your PCs who will INEVITABLY say: "I duck down an alleyway." As a DM, that is a big challenge in a city, actually. What if there are NO nearby alleys? Is your map going to be so detailed as to include them? If no alleys, what do the residents do with their garbage, etc.? Have a "I duck down" table for each city district, if necessary. Trust me - it really helps and adds some randomness for you to enjoy as a DM.
And of course, for a good DM, any challenge is an opportunity. How about the PC ducks into an alley, and randomly triggers ANOTHER encounter? Two encounters at once?
Also be ready for your PC's to open doors and climb walls. Do people leave their doors open? Locked? What about windows? Which buildings have balconies? Hanging laundry? Are there foot bridges? Climbable drainage pipes?
One of the major cities in my D&D world is called the Blue Coast. I created it in a game called Kingdoms and Castles. It's a nice little game for building cities and it's about $15 on Steam. I recommend it for anyone who wants a fun way to build a city and doesn't want to do a lot of work.
Another perk to the game is it has randomly generated names for all the people living in it, so you can just use that if you want to! It definitely helped me a good deal in my last game I ran.
The travel guide/brochure tip is really helpful
Super useful... currently 3 sessions in to running a long term campaign, and while I had bullet pointed landmarks/important areas, the layout was a huge mess. Still struggling with scale/mapping, but just hearing other humans mention their ideas helped spark a lot of the organizational stuff, districts and so-on. Thanks!
Always spot on with the cold opens😂😂😂
I have been listening to this and Poke & Chill, playing a Platinum nuzlocke, and it is... the best vibe.
I am about to run an Urban game, and it will be my first time DMing a full adventure. I had really hit a low point in my writing and afraid I was going to have to scrap the idea. Thanks to this and the Mystery videos, I'm back on track and more excited than ever. The long-form content is really helpful.
I was literally just looking for a good city video the past few days. Perfect timing, thank you!
This is a wonderful topic that intersects with things I have going on in my current campaign. I love the content you all are putting out. I've been a long time listener but finally joined your Patreon just as soon as I could afford to. Keep rocking.
I'm just about to start prepping an urban campaign and am so happy to have this video TT_TT
Glad to help!
Oooh nice to hear my hometown get a shout out! But yeah, it makes it very difficult to make old medieval streets sound exotic and interesting when all my players are from York too!
Faction interaction dice, I like that.
As far as wilderness factions, it makes me think of fortresses of colonizing soldiers, indigenous tribes, wizards and/or hags working and living in secret (unbeknownst to the soldiers and tribes), underground civilizations, goblin caves, kobold caves... including a sort of civilization vs. wilderness campaign where the player characters ran afoul of the law trying to get some spicy dirt on the local colony lords, and got ran out of town, but were already established enough to get enough footing with the help of the most relevant wilderness faction. This can be like a part gold rush, part 'psuedo' revolutionary war... part... Weird West pioneer campaign, but with DnD monsters, an Underdark, and other planes of existence.
And another day passes that I miss web dm
I'll never forget when my DM running Out of the Abyss told us about a "Deep Gnome City" and I instinctively said "WE DEEP GNOME CITY. WE DEEP GNOME CITY ON ROCK AND ROLLLLLL"
I love the idea of body system as analogy for city building! Super helpful video as always
I think I may have made some of my cities too interesting. Players are like, "We will stay here" it has kinda turned into a urban campaigne. Im running more of a "sandbox" game.
Please teach me 😂😭
As someone running an urban campaign (For two different groups!) this is good. I've already had Wintercrest as a working city for a long time and I love it
Geezer here....
LOL.. That intro described my settings greatest city to a tee. Basically its a human colony/arcology that was indeed built with earth elementals, magic and yes bards are key. They kept the colonists from going looney tuns along the way.
Game on.
that sounds wonderfully intriguing.
@@leem4386 Thanks for the encouragement. It seems everyone is interested in broken/dark world dystopia these days. I think a mega city with almost uncharted wilderness a few weeks away will provide more than ample opportunity for adventures.
Great info! A city needs the guild/city council (same guys), bailiff (not mayor), county sheriff (constable in a town), county judge, arms merchant, & a few inns and taverns, plus a bad guy of some sort. Magic items should only be bought & sold thru a special dealer who is maybe only in the capital city. No public library, but maybe a sage, scribe, or priest with a few books. And a coroner.
I love the idea of mephits changing based on their environment
I wish I had a group a guys like you to RPG with, Love the show!!
Have been playing on and off since 1984
I'm only half way through but so far I'm finding this video very inspiring. I apologize if you guys already talk about it later in this video, but I would love some ideas for where and how to start a campaign in a city instead of in a small town which is what a lot of people tend to suggest.
Great episode again. I drink every time Jim says "evocative"
I think this is now one of my favorite Web DM videos.
And boy, do I think one could make a great worldbuilding game out of this. Think Microscope, but with rules focused on City Building and the City's History.
Loved the shoutout to York. Gorgeous old town!
Has Jim heard about the Willow series?
Yeah we had a big freakout
I'm running an Exandira campaign (explorer's guide to wildemount but a different continent), and I made a city that was an enclave/floating city that went into hiding before the calamity. Think a city of mages & clerics in a huge cave under a mountain. But its upside down because the mountain itself was the flying city (proctiv's move mountain esque)
Watching this is making me want to design a campaign and city where each district is built around a school of magic, and each district is capped by a tower in the inner ring of the city that houses that guild's arch mage...
Kind of sounds like ravnica
21:18 "Sweet basilisk meats and cockatrice hot wings" That is why we play this game, folks. Edit: All organic basilisk meats with no added artificial basil.
A+ pun in the intro.
In my cities, I usually assign each shop a want or need on the fly. Like the potion master wants some giant clippings for something he is working on. Or the trinket shop, is need of large ocean shells to sell. Or the black smith is trying to work on something magical, but needs a patron to Sponsor it. Or the seamstress is looking for a particular silk. I’ve always felt that you can build a cool city lay out, cities by volcanoes, or sky fall cities, but it’s the people inside it that make it memorable, the settings just makes it a bit intriguing. I also believe that players that explore within the confides of DM knowledge always have more appealing games, versus just trying to wonder for wondering sake. But ya my cities for the most part are mapped out and usually I only have about 5 cities in an entire world because the are darn hard to create.
this video came out at the right time, i'm building a whole island with 11 kingdoms on it for my players to explore
An hour of web dm? Fuck yeah! Advice on something I literally need asap fuck yeah! Merry Christmas to me
City based D&D is my absolute favorite D&D so much to do
Did some research on Blades in the Dark. Well, I ordered it and cannot wait to get my mitts on it.
One of the most useful questions you can ask to make a city feel believable is "why was this city built here?" You can come at it from a lot of directions too. You can start with a place and develop a purpose, or start with a theme and flesh out its surroundings. Might be for trade, maybe agriculture, maybe strategic defense, or religious significance, but people always settle in a specific location for a specific reason. The city doesn't even need to actively serve its original purpose either, it could be an ancient city from a long dead culture that has been settled again,
I'm so excited. I've been hunting for a video like this! Thank you
Awesome! Hope you find it inspiring.
An excellent resource for how specific guilds can is the Livery Companies of London. There's 110 of them including separate ones for Wax Chandlers and Tallow Chandlers.
The handful of locations advice is so profoundly important that it really is the basis for all you need when running a city campaign.
I like to take it one step further. Pick a tv show you want to base the overall tone of your campaign on. Then pick the five or six major locations that show up over and over on that show. Start writing down combat and non combat encounters that can happen in each of those places.
Marvel's hell's kitchen shows = courthouse, abandoned building, enemy faction's drug filled warehouse, police department, dive bar.
Law and Order = courthouse, docks, loading bay of a trucking company, fish/butcher's or other outdoor market, police department, back alleys, CEO's office, boutique or high end gallery business.
Buffy the vampire slayer = nightclub, back alleys, sewers/caves, graveyards (have 5 or 6 of these alone), abandoned warhouse/factory, gothic mansion, school.
Once you have your main locations and about 10 to 20 events for those locations you then have enough random encounter tables to fill in the gaps between whatever over arching plot you want to throw at the party.
Neat!
This needs to be a series
Starship intro. Blank stare. Now the song is stuck in my head Pruitt !! Damn you !
I tend to build up from world laws to world shape to natural systems to life to sentience and then build my cities from stone one up, simulating the groups and individuals until i have everyone’s history and such... but thats a very in depth and slow way to do things X-p i do like the anatomy idea and the travel guide idea... using those together might allow for a pretty quick and easy mix and match system to be makeable.
Hey, you guys are awesome. Thank you for what you do.
Thanks Lance. Very nice of you to say.
The first thing I define with any city in a campaign is: Why is it here. What function does this population center have in the campaign. Is it a hub of travel or trade? Is it an transition point? A major port or the point where a highway meets a border? Is it an industrial center? The hub of a region full of precious metal or gemstone production? Why are these people gathered in this place and what is the focus of their lives? There should be no generic cities, each should have their own character and you should feel that purpose in everything that happens in that City. Yes this town has great brothels and a market where you can buy just about everything but what makes it different from the other half-dozen cities in the game? I also write a solid paragraph about how this city came to be and what it's endured in it's history. This is what ties this city to the world in a way that makes sense.
Next I define the rulership of the City, not always the Noble that rules the area but the decision makers that regulate the market and abdicate the rules. Are they skilled? Incompetent? Are things getting better or worse for their efforts? Are they draconian? Or skeezy? Do they hire subordinates that are competent or those that tend to kiss their ass? This is how I determine how the city acts around the players.
Next what features are unique about this city? Are there crafts or goods that are very cheap here? Are there aspects of the city that are restricted to a specific caste? Is the city divided unusually with travel restrictions? Is there an underground for light-sensitive creatures? Are there racial slums? Are there districts dedicated to industry like the Fishing Docks or the cloth dying district? Are the town guard magically powerful or able to detect lies or any other unusual feature? If my players go a few months without visiting this town and it comes up in the campaign again these are the things my players should be reminded of about this city.
Next I identify locations players will be interested in. There may be a dozen taverns in a large city but there's only two that matter to the players, The info tavern and the party tavern. There's going to be one tavern or tea shop or squid-fry restaurant where the bartender has quiet conversations with patrons or that shadowy finger holds office in a corner, where you go to for news or information. And you need the big drinking hall where Bards are always in line to play with the cute flirty bar maids and the perpetually happy bartender. The prices are high here but the food is AMAZING. You can't afford this place when you're scraping and when you hit it big this is your first stop. This is where you meet your rich patron or quest giver. I always have a land-mark type location that makes the city district, a fighting pit, or a market district for magic items and it always goes back to that purpose of the city, this isn't a defining feature of the city but something defined by it, a thing that couldn't be anywhere else in the world. And I'll have something like this in just about every town or hamlet. Players like something like this that's a hand-hold for remembering locations. I usually put a unique "character" shop in any settlement in my game. Just a named-shop that has a little more character than others and sells something cool the players may want. Every location in a setting always has an named NPC with some character written in and ideally some abstract motivation for what they want and what might motivate them beyond just their business or posting.
Lastly I create a cast of characters that will make your visit to the city more fun, bawds, harlots, fops, bullies, theives. I always define the guard captain because my players will always have a run-in with the law. I do my best to make these characters unique. These characters should be invested in the city, involved with a larger organization, not random agents. So if the players have conflict with them, it's not just someone they beat up, it's a conflict they have to deal with in the city. These characters may have plot hooks or just moving motivations that would encourage them to work for or against the players.
I'm gonna be running a campaign with some homebrew cyberpunk-y rules (Technomancer's Textbook), and this video is perfect
My players just finished a long, arduous journey to a major city, so this will help me come up with what awaits them.
This is nice timing. I've been mulling over the idea of running a City Focused campaign!
I really grok the whole designating die size to a faction mechanic. I am going to use that.
I guess I should have expected a Starship reference from the guy running the Spelljammer game.
Also, and I know no one asked, the game Godbound has a free version on DrivethruRPG, and it includes somereally useful charts for building noble courts, crimminal organizations, and governmental bureaucracies that help you identify who the primary power players are in any organization that the PCs might have to deal with, as well as important but less powerful NPCs. Great stuff for city building!
I have a concept of city cleaning being done by an army of wizard apprentices with prestidigitation. As they study, they learn more, and finally take on their own apprentice to teach prestidigitation to, freeing them from having to clean the city an hour every day.
Talk about timing. I was pondering all last night about a city-based campaign, and when I went to start writing, BOOM this video appeared from the ether.
our scrying worked!!
Putting some stuff together here's an idea: A Major Questgiver NPC is a high level magic user who pays the characters to hunt monsters and bring them back soe alive, some dead. The mage of course uses the bodies as components in spells and potions. AND the age also runs a restaurant, where they cook up and serve all the non-magical parts of the beast, and they sell its manure to be used to make magical crops. The characters get paid in gold, food, and potions that probably work.
Some of the best tools to build cities that you probably already own:
1. The Guild Artisan background in the Player’s Handbook has a d20 list of professions. Use this to create a bunch of shops.
2. The group patrons chapter in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Mine this chapter for the "powers that be" in the city.
Then determine how the powers compete with each other.
I had an amazing campaign idea. Well 2 that go together but one that specifically relates to this video.
The first was an aquatic, seafaring campaign. A world of ocean, islands, and archipelagos. But I plan on having a background mystery. A massive island, near continent size (though the current inhabitants only know the term through old stories before the flood), that is surrounded and hidden by a veritable labyrinth of mountainous islands, volcanoes and whirlpools and if they ventured far enough in, protected by a massive force field.
If the campaign gets to grindy/dreadful/boring or if they finish the main story, whichever comes first, I plan on having a major event drop the shield and have the story lead to the island, a massive city of magitek marvels and secrets. A megadungeon that also served as a city, and thus needs to be planned as such. Worse comes to worse I just stick with having the city portion be a completely separate campaign and just rebalance the levels to start earlier.
I plan on having the players expand into the city as NPCs eventually settle further inwards, having to contend with rival factions, the world-spanning Thalassocracy, and the city's own defense systems (and possible residents of unknown origin?)
I got the idea for the city based on Alexander from Final Fantasy, specifically FFXIV as its lore states it was meant to be a massive city for the intelligencia to live and travel in. In the raids we got to see some of the city, but much of the exploration was in the inner-workings, legs and reactors and such.
I plan on having the city itself be both inside and out the structure of the great robot, with the immediate goal being to reach the center of the city's outside, as it's believed to be the capitol building, where items of import are thought to be stored. As the defense mechanism were activated centuries ago and segregated the various sections and rings of the city, they have to crawl their way through the city and discover what still remains.
And this vid will be a great way to figure out how to fully flesh out city streets and figure out what kinds of loot, locations, and items of significance could be found! As well as where people who come settle the city would want to set up.
Plus it'll help me figure out how to populate the islands in the first campaign so even if my rather grandiose plans falter, I can still make that first campaign go over smoothly in terms of having cool locals.
Fun fact. My players, don't tell them, will get to build a city.
We actually have a similar thing right now! except we're the players and we were given a starting settlement by Mordekeinen, on account of being mid ranking members of his organization.
My evocation wizard has a backstory with the elementals and does conjury as a secondary profession, and plans on binding elementals for services within the city, for now mostly mining and construction via earth elementals.
@@jemm113 the game I'm a player in, we've been slowly building up an abandoned town that has a green dragon juvenile in it. We're not growing too quickly, I think. I'm unsure. It's from, I like it a lot.
one of the most helpful videos yet
Having played a game in sigil. It's rough to try and Improv in a city. If you've planned and you know the basics of how your city should work and what the districts mean you can do it. But the more you plan the more you will be rewarded