Does this guy have any actual solutions for us? Of course I do! I'm not just here to poop parties! But first, we must once again return to the ancient wisdom: the difference between game design and level design.
Less focus on game design, more focus on level design
As I alluded to in the conclusion of Part 2, the reason that so many people are searching for "the solution to cities" in D&D is because they feel at a loss for how to handle gameplay during those sessions. And indeed, I have myself played a lot of crummy town sessions in my life. But at least in my experience, one problem that those sessions always had in common was just a lack of available information, on one or both sides of the screen.
"Welcome to the town of Murderhoboville. What would you like to do?""Ummm, well, uhhh. I dunno."
And the game stalls out. The number of times I've been in that situation is embarrassing. But watch this:
"Welcome to the town of Murderhoboville. Right here near the city gates, there's a temple, a stable, six pubs, and a butcher. What would you like to do?""Ooo ooo I have an idea! Let's buy a donkey and see if we can get it to drink at all six pubs! It'll be hilarious!"
Just do a little bit of level design and the problem evaporates.
Procedures are great for helping the players answer questions like "what can I do?" and "how should I expect things to work?" as well as for helping the GM answer questions like "what comes next?"
But the devil is in the details. "What can I do?" is a question that can take many forms. Sometimes it's asked to clarify the logistical constraints of what's achievable, like when you ask "what am I able to accomplish during this round of combat with the actions I have?" But there's a big difference between that and a question like "what even is there to do in this crappy town?"
Thus, I believe that raw setting information is the most valuable asset for supporting settlement gameplay, regardless of the activity. If the players have lots of info about a city, that tells them what kinds of things there are to do, places to visit, people and factions to interact with, problems to start, etc. And if the GM has lots of info about a city, that helps them determine the logical consequences of the party's actions, since they have a full view of how the city functions.
From there, yes, go ahead and employ procedures for specific activities as necessary. Combat rules for if a fight breaks out, localcrawl rules for if the party is exploring a small area under pressure, downtime rules for downtime, investigation rules for snooping, chase rules for chasing, etc. All that game design stuff will surely be helpful. But this post is instead going to be about generating level design. Sound good? Let's rock and roll.
Two Pillars
So if the main thing is level design, then we should talk about what kinds of info you should prep in order to make a settlement that you feel comfortable running and the players feeling invited to engage with. There's a lot of different aspects you could focus your energy on, but they almost always go back to the two main ingredients that make up a settlement: buildings and people.
Buildings. Normally, when the players ask, "is there an X in this Y?" you can consult your notes to confirm if there is or not. "Is there an atlas in the wizard's book collection?" "Well, let me see, I'll just check the list of books." But when the players ask, "is there a copper smith in town?" you can't handle questions like that by consulting your exhaustive list of all buildings that exist in this settlement. Even very small settlements usually have far too many buildings for you to feasibly prep. Dozens, hundreds, thousands. So for the most part, buildings must be abstracted.
The nice thing about settlements is that they usually share most of the same types of buildings as one another, and will usually have multiples of each. So you can just assume "yes" for most of what the players ask for, and "no" if it's complete nonsense. If the players say, "let's go sell this dragon meat to a butcher," it doesn't matter that you haven't specifically listed a butcher among your prepped sites. You know there's some butchers in this town, so just let the players sell their meat.
Years ago, when I was working on Brave, I made this list of generic settlement locations for a standard pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, divided by wealth levels per district. I would definitely change a few things about it now, but this gives you a pretty good start.
But take notice of what's not on the list. A lot of pretty basic locations we take for granted nowadays. You'll probably find them on this list, instead.
While some of the entries on this table are just special locations, like shrines and plazas and famous streets, many of them are still "generic" in a sense. Banks, courthouses, libraries, graveyards, etc. The reason these aren't on the first list is because they were quite rare and special in pseudo-medieval fantasy times. Part of prepping a settlement is giving it a handful of these, so you can be more discerning about how to answer the players when they ask you "does this town have an observatory?"
Which brings me to my next point. Obviously, you can't list every building. But you also can't list no buildings, either. Yes, the majority of buildings should be kept kind of nebulous and undefined until needed, but you still want to have some major sites that exist separately from the generic list. Your players need something to lure their attention, after all. Whatever the most notable sites the settlement has, whether they're interesting or important or famous or relevant to a quest or whatever, those are worth prepping.
So in that previous example, when the GM said,
"Well, let's see. Right here near the city gates, there's a temple, a stable, six pubs, and a butcher."
I wouldn't actually say that, because temples, stables, pubs, and butchers are all generic enough to merely be implied. What I would say is something like,
"This part of town is big on construction. There's the massive brick factory, the brickmaker's guild office, a mansion belonging to a wealthy family of real estate moguls, and one really fancy restaurant."
It's understood that this construction district also contains plenty of residences, stores, artisans, etc. Instead, the things worth prepping and listing out for the players are the unique locations that define the district. Mostly uncommon locations, but also maybe some common locations that are nonetheless notable. If there's an arena, university, or cathedral, definitely prep it. But only prep a blacksmith or cobbler if you have a reason to distinguish them from the numerous generic alternatives available in town. "Yes, there are several blacksmiths in this city. But you've already heard from the locals about Olga Hardwick, the famous rune-smith."
People. As I've said before, the social landscape matters even more than the physical landscape. See the works of Amanda P to learn more about this (and maybe perhaps my own post). Before simply cooking up a bunch of quirky characters though, I'd start by thinking bigger.
Major communities, subcultures, ethnic groups, political movements, and so on. Can the people of this settlement be divided into major categories somehow? Even if it's just "east sider" and "west sider," that has way more potential than you'd think. They could be hierarchical, lateral, qualitative, quantitative, you name it. Taking the time to decide on this first will make it way easier to both generate NPCs as well as the plots that arise from interacting with them.
Additionally, you should have factions, not just individual NPCs. You probably already know this, but it's worth writing it down here. Having a handful of factions is better than just having a bunch of miscellaneous NPCs because they drive conflict and adventure just by their basic existence. They're motivated, they have lots resources, and they pretty much always have reasons to get involved with the party (e.g. hire the PCs for quests, recruit the PCs as members, be targeted by the PCs, etc.). If you make an enemy of an individual, you can just kill them and it's over. But if you make an enemy of a faction, you now have an ongoing problem, and defeating them probably requires attacking them systematically.
Now make it one pillar. A simple rule of thumb: 1 major site = 1 named NPC / faction. Every time you add a library or a theatre, make sure to include a librarian or an actor. Likewise, for every fun and interesting unique NPC you know you want to squeeze into your settlement, give them a major site where they can be found. This makes your notes easy to organize. Instead of a list of locations and a roster of NPCs, you can just have a list of locations that each contain one or more NPCs. You don't have to stick to this rule 100% of the time, but you'll save yourself a headache later if you merge these into one step of your prep.
Okay, but how much do I prep?
I used to think that the answer should be based on size. A town would have more info than a village, and a city would have more info than a town, right?
But now I think the far more important variable is mileage. How much use do you anticipate getting out of this settlement?
If you're running a megacity campaign, the more detail, the better. But if it's a town that the party is literally just passing through on its way to somewhere else, only briefly stopping to rest before moving on and never looking back, then you "should" prep... well, no information, if you can help it. Alright, alright, maybe a name, I guess.
But chances are, your settlement is somewhere in between. The players will be here for several sessions before moving on, or they'll be returning here again and again as a home base during their adventures, or they'll be spending their downtime here whenever they finish a big adventure. How much detail does that settlement need?
Also consider that maybe the players are only briefly stopping in town because it has no information. If you tell them, "this city is famous for its exotic monster menagerie" then there's a good chance they'll say, "weeeell I guess it couldn't hurt to stay for an extra day to see some of those monsters..."
Thus, the key to striking the balance between "enough substance to fuel the game" and "not too much prep work for the GM" is to add detail incrementally. A settlement starts simple, but the more time the players spend there, the more details you add. It's like the old advice about doing all your worldbuilding one session at a time, only preparing as much material as you need for the adventure.
Prep is easier when you have a formula. If the amount of detail you add with each increment is standardized, then you know exactly how much work you're in for each time you update a settlement with new material.
It's also easier if your ask your players their intentions. Don't try to read their minds. Just ask them before the end of the session, "do y'all think you're going to be sticking around for awhile or moving on?" That tells you whether it's worth spending the interim fleshing out the settlement further.
Rome wasn't built in a day
From Discword: Ankh-Morpork, by Treefrog Games. Good use of districts.
First, give every settlement on your map a minimum of
- Name
- Size, best expressed in broad size classes, like "village," "town," and "city"
- One or two minor details. Enough to give it a basic identity
Next, if the players rest in a settlement (or they've said they're planning to rest at a settlement), and especially if you have a session to prep, then add the following info to the settlement:
- A theme, e.g. mining town, pirates, treehouses, pilgrimage site, undead, etc. It makes it easier to brainstorm the rest of the content you have to populate it with.
- Who's in charge / how this place is governed
- Maybe a little bit of history
- A major site + NPC
- A major site + NPC
Then, when the players indicate that they intend to spend a fair amount of time in this settlement, it's time to split it up into a handful of districts before adding more sites / NPCs. What was "one" location before quickly becomes "several" locations, just by dividing it up into zones. A district with a strong theme (and maybe a memorable name) automatically carries a ton of informational value just by itself. For example:
- Old Town: historic buildings, old residences, monuments
- Copper Hill: gated community for the upper class
- The Waterfront: docks, warehouses, shipyards
- Gnomeville: neighborhood of Gnomish migrants
- Downtown: businesses on and around main street
If your players came to this town to plan a kraken-hunting expedition, I bet they'd know exactly where to get their supplies, consult with experts, and recruit some help.
How many districts? In this case, I say base it on the size of the settlement.
- Villages are only 1 district, so just add 2 sites + NPCs.
- Towns should have 2-4 districts. Add 1 site + NPC to each.
- Cities will have 5-8 districts. Add 1 site + NPC to each.
Finally, if the players stay long enough to spend a period of downtime in this settlement, that's when you increment the detail. For villages, just add 2 more sites + NPCs. For towns and cities, add 1 site + NPC to each district. Alternatively, if there's one district that you anticipate the players focusing on, maybe instead add 3 sites + NPCs to it.
Once you reach about 20 sites + NPCs, that's probably more than enough to fuel the game for a good long while. You'll know best if it seems like additional detail is warranted, based on the trajectory of the campaign.
And of course, you can always prep ahead of time if you know for certain how much mileage a given settlement will need. For example, if you're planning your campaign around a specific hub town, then skip straight to fleshing it out a bit. If you're planning to run a megacity campaign, then I would construct it the same way I construct a megadungeon: make multiple cities and then attach them together.
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