10 Things your D&D Village Needs... other than a Tavern

you kick the dust off your boots as you walk towards the General Store you step inside the building and its shade is a welcome reprieve from the Noonday sun inside our two men the older one seems very bothered the silver Rooks are missing it's been almost two days since anyone has seen them I checked the stables and their Carriage is still there so I sent the sheriff up the road to the farm to see if they had walked that way the younger man responds what about Mr and Mrs Randolph has anyone seen them you know the butler the maid has anyone checked the servants quarters I didn't think about the servants quarters [Music] hello I'm Brad wolf and this is dire Dan where we talk about DND and tabletop RPGs this video is our third in our campaign prep series and we are talking about the village in the last campaign prep video I showed you a dungeon and how to start your adventure right there in media res at the door of the dungeon but I also promised I would come back and show you a village and how to start your game in the village and then get to the dungeon I'm also going to show you how to build a village by using this one as an example and the best mindset I can suggest for building a village is to treat it like you would a dungeon just think of roads and buildings as hallways and rooms in place an emphasis on social encounters over combat Encounters this can make building a village much less intimidating of course the first thing you're going to put in your village is a Tavern even though the Dungeons and Dragons Tavern is nothing like historical taverns it's a Trope and we've used it for decades with good reason it's essentially a way for the players to meet the common folk because let's face it If You're Gonna Save the World you need to have a reason to do it and you need to know who you're saving it for and here we go this is our sample village and we're zooming out onto our Tavern and what we're going to do to make this tavern unique is it's going to be run by a family of Cobalts and not just any old Cobalts flying Cobalts why flying Cobalts because they're even more interesting than regular Cobalts and this Cobalt family has a side hustle running the Stables which makes sense when the adventurers come to a Tavern they need a place for their pack mule and their horses and when it comes to grouping horses it's much easier for a flying Cobalt to do it than a walking Cobalt and I'm sure you can come up with your own crazy ideas for taverns I've done a lot of different things over the years I've had a Tavern keeper who is 10 feet tall which meant his Tavern was extra large I've had a Tavern sitting on top of a waterfall and a tiefling who ran a Tavern with a bath house that was powered by Elemental methods alright now that we have the tavern out of the way let's look at 10 things to add to your town or Village to make it playable number one on the list is leadership because every Community needs structure this includes guidance Direction cultural expectations social expectations and boundaries in most medieval fiction you get a type of feudalism a hierarchy of kings and queens counts Dukes Lords and Ladies landed Knights and even Mayors that's a lot to choose from but my understanding of medieval history is that most small villages simply had a council and that's what we're going to do here we have a council of matriarchs and even on this small of a scale we can have conflict because each of the matriarchs will have their own concerns and potential plot Hooks and we've already set up the most immediate concern and that's the missing silver Rook family and that's the plot hook that takes our players to the dungeon from last video and I promise to connect the dungeon and this Village so more on that later so the next thing you you want to put in your town is a type of law enforcement because someone needs to enforce the structure and boundaries laid out by the leadership and again from my understanding in medieval times the Town Council would also act as a type of law enforcement however to give us another type of NPC we're going to add a sheriff and one thing I find interesting about the word origin of a sheriff is it comes from the two words Shire and Reeve Shire of course refers to a small community like a county and Reeve is a type of enforcer what I find useful there is a sheriff can be responsible for more than just the village but all the nearby farms and homesteads this gives you plenty of reason for the sheriff to need help from adventurers Ergo your PCS number three on our list is equipment equipment is important for low-level gameplay and it's especially important if you're running osr style play where you're really focused on exploration and Dungeon Crawl so it's important to have a general good store a market or a Bazaar in your village this allows your players to re-equip their supplies it also gives them an opportunity to role play and maybe haggle with a shopkeeper for whatever reason players really like to do that so this Village has a general goods store owned by ilamar who is desperate to find the rest of the silver Rook family side note his secret is he would actually be happy if the silver Rooks were gone because it would open up a space on the Town Council so a member of his family could take the open seat now at this point in the process you want to start thinking about your players and their characters but even in the early stages of prep you can plan for the different types of characters number four on the list are things for the experts that includes bards Rangers and Rogues here you could add Merchant guilds thieves guilds assassins guilds that could all create plot hooks for your Rogues and barns Additionally you could have Witcher style monster hunts for the ranger holidays celebrations and festivals are always a great way to create encounters and gather NPCs in one location so the characters can show off their skills in this case we're going to provide some low-level magic items like dust of dryness that can help with the survival aspect of the game and dust of disappearance and dust of sneezing and choking to help out the more Trixie characters so dralen the son of the store owner is a Wizard's Apprentice who makes these magic items and sells them in his father's shop side note since drayland's the wizard Apprentice he'll have a plot hook for us later next on the list are things for the Mages and that includes Sorcerers warlocks and wizards now it's up to you and your campaign setting what you want to do with magic items being sold I personally don't include major magic shops in my campaigns I keep the amount of magic items for purchase relatively small and mostly just common and uncommon magic item types so since I don't include magical Walmarts in my campaigns I include small vendors who specialize in a specific type of item and in this case we're going going to add an herbalist who makes potions so opal are gnome herbalist cells potions of climbing growth and water walking number six things for the priests this includes clerics Druids and paladins the obvious choice here is a shrine or a temple you could also have a druidic circle or a nightly order but if you want to get even more Supernatural you could have a Celestial like a Chiron or coatal living in the town but be aware if you have a high level NPC living in your village or town then you'll need an explanation for the players to be solving problems and that's why in anything as small as a village or town I never put an NPC who's higher than a challenge rating of two or character level of four and if I have more than one of those in a town I explain why they wouldn't work together because otherwise if your town has four fourth level characters that are all willing to work together why aren't they going on all these quests therefore in this Village we have the Temple of Radiance and Trisa the sun speaker she uses the CR2 priest stat block however she can cast lesser restoration and remove curse as long as she's inside the temple it's helpful to give lower level characters access to these spells and it's also a great way to motivate them to go on quests and now we need to motivate our Warriors one way to do that is limit access to new weapons and new armor for convenience sake you could say that all weapons and all armor types are available in any Village or town however it's more realistic for those items to be limited outside of a large city this could motivate your warriors to travel to other locations and note that they could pick up any weapon off of any monsters they defeat so they could pick up a great ax off of a defeated orc or a long sword off of a defeated hobgoblin but if they want a good quality weapon they're going to need to buy it from somebody who makes quality weapons so Craig Ock the Deep gnome is the blacksmith in this Village and he specializes in medium armor Shields axes and hammers but he can definitely recommend a good swordsmith who lives in the city nearby or he can take that sword you got from the Fallen hobgoblin and sharpen it for you and make it better quality so you see how setting limitations on weapons and armor is a way to motivate your players to get out there and explore because if your fighter really wants heavy armor and a quality sword they're gonna have to dungeon delve to defeat some bad guys or they're gonna have to travel to the city which means your fighter is going to be more likely to take that plot hook that leads them that direction and that's how you can use limitations on equipment to Spur players toward plot Hooks and there's many other things you can put in town for your Warrior classes fighting pits gladiatorial Arenas strongman competitions and martial arts tournaments just to name a few another thing players really like are pets and animals for multiple reasons players like these fuzzy or scaly Sidekicks and we've already established our village has a stable next to the end so the players will have access to horses but let's add a pair of Dwarven siblings VAR wise the brother raises mastiffs and of course these can be used as your goodest boy sidekick or as a mount for half lanes and gnomes and the sister Rosara knows the Spells of find familiar and animal messenger she operates her business delivering messages to other Villages farms and towns but she can also teach these spells to the play your characters so once again this gives players something to spend their coin on or a reason to do a quest for these NPCs next on the list is the magical and mysterious remember we're playing a fantasy setting the weird and the wondrous keep things interesting for example you could have a village that tolerates a necromancer because the zombies till and work the fields or you could have an Arcana Punk machine left here centuries ago that magically protects the town from Intruders or you could have nearby Fey or Elemental Magic that affects the land in some way for our village we're going to add a haunted tree and an abandoned Wizard Tower and we'll come back to those in just a minute because number 10 on our list is encounters it's great to have some encounters in town because it breaks up the monotony of shopping and just talking to Quest givers it can also provide a certain amount of investment for your players as they go about riding the wrongs and protecting the village they can become attached to the Village over the years I've definitely had players move into buildings after they cleared them of monsters or purchase a home for themselves in a town when players do this it provides a quest hub for you the DM and a safe place for the player characters to return after adventures and this of course brings us back to our intro where shop owner elamar is looking for the missing silver Rook family and his son suggests searching the servant's house when the players travel from the general goods store the servant's house they discover that Mr and Mrs Randolph are dead and five crawling claws Scamper about the servant's house and they find Young Daniel silverrook locked in the cellar Daniel will quickly spill the beans that after Miriam Silverbrook died the family became very concerned Daniel silverrook is betrothed to a young Noble from the big city the silver Rooks expected this marriage to improve their status but they feared Lady silverworks Death would cause the other family to call off the marriage so they attempted a magic spell to bring lady Miriam silverrook back to life at least long enough to attend the wedding this included practicing this magic over and over again hence all the crawling claws but in the meantime The Crawling claws got loose and Daniel locked him himself in the cellar as we know from the dungeon video it all went horribly wrong the rest of the silver Rooks were turned into zombies and Lady Miriam silverrook is now a specter poor Daniel doesn't know this yet and he'll tell their players that the rest of the family headed off to the barrows and that's your quick and easy way to start in this Village and then go to the dungeon and the dungeon gives us plenty of first level encounters so let's flesh out the rest of this village with some second and third level encounters remember our haunted tree well it's not actually haunted it's merely the entrance to an underground Cavern that's home to our spider Fang Goblins the Goblins have slowly been expanding their cave Network and they've breached the village well so now Grime and waste from the Goblins Caverns is spilling into the Village Water Supply so now the superstitious villagers believe the haunted tree is affecting the well and it is but not in the magical way the villagers think so let's add two more second level encounters one investigation and one combat remember our Dwarven siblings their mother lady Ruby main is a member of The Village Council and the rest of the villagers are extremely suspicious about her stunningly gorgeous appearance in fact she looks notably younger than both of her adult children and while VAR wise her son is extremely loyal Rosara the daughter is willing to ask for help it turns out lady Ruby main made a deal with a local hag and the hag is slowly stealing Vitality from the two children so effectively the adult children are aging faster while lady Ruby main is growing younger and of course the players can Venture into the forest and hunt down the hag and whatever beastly minions you give her and we're going to put a magic Scroll of knock in the hag's Treasure because that's how our players are going to get into the old Wizards Tower remember dreland the shop owner's son we said he would have a plot hook for us later he was once the Wizard's Apprentice years ago the wizard moved away but dralen still knows how to get get inside he knows that it requires the knock spell to open the door because the door's been sealed with the Arcane lock spell since players won't have access to a knock spell until their third level or until they defeat the hag this ensures that your third level content is locked inside the tower until the players are powerful enough to face these encounters long before the wizard left the tower he lived quite comfortably with a series of animated objects that served him and cleaned up the place he had also summoned a spectator to defend his treasure clearly the wizard expected to return but never did and left these magical beings to themselves now realize Spectators are conjured creatures who are made from the remains of a Beholder they're not the most mentally stable creatures so now that the wizard is gone The Spectator believes himself to be the new Wizard of the Tower and he has claimed a set of animated armor to be his body and uses the rug of smothering and two Flying Swords to protect himself defeating these monsters and clearing out the tower could give the players a new residence or the players could sell the tower to one of the matriarch families and set up a reoccurring NPC to interact with for the rest of the campaign now regarding the five-step campaign prep process we've only completed the first step and you have enough to run four or five sessions so while you're running your dungeon and your village you can use the time between sessions to prep the rest of the campaign so hopefully you notice that it's not that hard to be a dungeon master you don't even have to have all five of these steps complete before you start running games and there's links to all of this in the description below so you don't even have to build your own you can just steal mine and there you go that's 10 things to add to your village other than a Tavern I hope you found that helpful as you plan your next campaign and make sure you stay tuned because our next video will drill down into our factions and how to use factions in your campaign prep so I'll see you next time and thanks again for visiting the dire Den thank you

Channel: Dire Den

Views: 102,125

Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, DND, 5e, DND 5e, D&D 5e, TTRPG, Dungeon Master, How Play DnD, DnD Town, DnD Village, DnD City, DnD Tavern

Id: YZ64SFx-n-k

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023