City Campaign Mistakes that Ruin RPGs

I think that lots of folk are intimidated by running d d campaigns in large cities but I honestly don't think that they are Beyond most game Masters skill sets I feel like even new game Masters could successfully run enjoyable City campaigns if they wanted to you see City campaigns are not exclusively the domain of experts or veterans so why is it then that we can often think like that like lots of folk think that running a d t campaign in a city is super challenging and they simply steer clear and I think this is because we can have certain misconceptions about running City campaigns well we'll call them pitfalls of perception these are the things that cause us to believe City campaigns are super hard to run and the domain of experienced dungeon Masters alone so let's talk about these three common pitfalls of thinking that I believe once you shatter you'll find that running a city campaign while perhaps still challenging is certainly within your reach Pitfall number one assuming that City campaigns are sandbox campaigns I suspect that this is one of of the principal things that terrifies folk about running City Adventures they think that running a city campaign means that they are running a Sandbox game I have run several City campaigns over the years in fact by default most of the campaigns I have ever run were City campaigns that used to waterdeep one of the largest cities in the Forgotten Realms as the setting and none of them were sandbox games I always follow the standard RPG structure of giving my players plot hooks for one or more Adventures that they might pursue now sometimes the games may have felt like sandboxes because the characters could technically go anywhere and because I would usually give them more than one plot hook or option of what to do next to work on resolving the campaign's main problem they weren't sandboxes I was certainly guiding my players Direction Through the use of plot hooks even though I never made them go anywhere a well-designed plot hook will almost always get players going in a direction that the game master is prepared for and will not leave them wandering about the city randomly and if your players are wandering about the city randomly I submit to you that you either won didn't give them plot hooks two your plot hooks were poorly designed over three you and your players need to have a Frank and open discussion about the social contract that exists between players and game Masters in RPGs now if you're having trouble creating good plot hooks I do have a couple videos that you might find helpful I will throw links to them down below oh crap out of coffee I'll be right back Zach hey where'd my coffee pot go okay listen Zach I'll I'll make sure you get an extra big bonus this month if you don't cut this out of the video okay now that we got rid of that idiot who likes to talk too much I have a very special announcement for you you know how we talk a lot on the channel about describe and how their narrative descriptions are great yeah well we're not gonna do that again today however this time they have a super cool new feature the Sonic library now it would be great if the Sonic Library were Advanced Weaponry that you could aim at your players heads to obliterate them the next time they meta-gamed or ignored a plot heart but unfortunately that's not what it does even though I have faith that the wonderful folks that describe will someday develop that feature instead the Sonic Library gives a vast library of sound effects and music okay okay look the Sonic Library basically gives you cool sound effects music and Ambiance that you can play in your games and it goes along with the narrative descriptions that describe has always offered now of course you can play The Sound and Music at your game but it can also be streamed to your players over the Internet so if that isn't enough reason for you to go over to describe.com and check them out for free then I'm gonna have to threaten you with my ax again which I which I forgot to bring into this skit so that's gonna be less effective than it should be hey get out of my chair and stop threatening Zach he's not gonna put any of your sleazy plugs in this video all right you hear that Zach nothing the Barbarian said goes in this video nothing Pitfall number two making the campaign and adventures all about politics listen I I personally don't enjoy campaigns or Adventures that are mostly about politics I may touch on politics from time to time but they're not a main focus of my games and yet as I previously mentioned I mostly run city-based campaigns being in a city does not equal needing to run Adventures that deal with politics you can still run bread and butter RPG Adventures that deal with delving into dungeons or other locations as much as you want you see the city simply serves as the main location or the Hub where the campaign takes place in my opinion would a city-based campaign really gives you is more options for not only your locations but also the type of Adventures you want to run okay first let's talk about all the different locations where Adventures might take place if you are running your game in a city first you got City buildings any city building the palace the castle The Tavern the Guild Hall any plethora of City buildings are available to you then of course you have the underdark I mean you could have sewers or city buildings that link up to the underdark all the underground Caverns where you could have tons of cool interesting things take place there could be ruins underneath there they could come upon Dwarven tunnels and a Dwarven compound underground you could have locations near the city where Adventures take place within maybe half a day or a day of travel I mean look at a water deep there are mountains to the north a forest to the southeast and then the Ocean Adventures can take place in any of those locations you are not limited to the city itself okay now let's take a look at the different types of Adventures and campaigns that are possible first you have faction conflict this is when you have issues ongoing between two different factions or more factions which are just basically groups or organizations and they said you could have one faction request help from the PCS in helping deal with whatever issue they have with the other faction in my early hand of light campaign the group was assisting the red sashes a vigilante group in rooting out a Thieves Guild that had moved into waterdeep or the faction might just be a group that is serving as a patron for your party of adventurers and sponsoring the quest that they go on I think Patron games like this are lots of fun and that's one of the reasons that we have published patrons and factions in Lair magazine if you're looking for some of those I'll point you to loyalty and lies the January 2022 issue or Shadow and salvation the September 2021-ish of course there are other issues that have patrons and factions in them too you'll just have to poke around in the DM layer store to find them you can also have your typical big bad villain as like the main focus of your campaign just because you're in a city doesn't mean there aren't bad guys shoot just look at our modern cities there are lots of bad guys there right the thing is is that they skirt the law and they are difficult for authorities to either capture or prove guilty so you just need to build some sort of rationale around that and the reasons that the city officials can't solve the problem themselves and that the characters need to get involved and this isn't too hard either in my opinion this is how I see it first most of the guards and soldiers in a city are not very powerful and they aren't suited for taking on powerful villains and groups thus they Outsource that work to adventuring parties who are one more powerful and too Expendable of course big cities like waterdeep do have their own powerful groups at their disposal such as Force grade but they also have lots of issues and bad guys to deal with and that keeps groups like force gray busy meaning that they need to contract outwork to adventuring parties so just keep those things in mind the next time your players ask why aren't the guards just dealing with this problem themselves this is a legitimate question as long as you're prepared for and have a good response some rationale everything will be okay sometimes I answer that question by simply saying well if the guards dealt with it you wouldn't have an adventure to go on and there would be no game so yes that's not usually as satisfying as having a real reason but we all know that that's that's the real real reason is that if the guards did everything there would be no game for us to play Murder Mysteries are another type of campaign that you could run even though these tend to be individual Adventures as part of a campaign and probably not the entire campaign themselves like you wouldn't probably have an entire campaign that's only murder mysteries that unless of course you and your players really loved that sort of thing and that's what you wanted to play and nobody's gonna stop you and tell you that it's wrong because it's not it's fair if you really want to do that and then of course we have politics which you of course can run your campaign based around political Adventures if you want to nothing stopping you and you got a whole city politicians abound so there you go now delving these are the details of how to do all of these different types of Adventures is Way Beyond the scope of this video so I'm not gonna go there but those are definitely things that you could do and I'm sure you can find some videos out on YouTube somewhere that delve into specifics on each type by the way if you're finding this information helpful please give me a thumbs up and leave a comment for the algorithm down below let me know what is your biggest frustration in with running City campaigns or what you find intimidating about them Pitfall number three creating and fleshing out everything in the city a game master may feel like they need to detail out everything in the city because the PCS are there and the GM might need them businesses NPCs groups government Etc however this is a trap don't flush out everything just what you will probably need now what I'm gonna do here is list out roughly in order of priority based upon my experience what you're probably going to need fleshed out a little bit in advance when you're running a city campaign and this is assuming the group is going to stay in that City for quite some time perhaps the entire campaign otherwise you don't need to flesh out nearly as many of things that I'm about to go over if it's a city the group is just passing through then prepare the absolute bare minimum that you think you'll need or just improvise it all at the table but for a city where they're gonna stay there for a little bit of time these are some of the high level Basics that I strongly recommend that you flesh out in advance first the type of government what type of government is there is it a monarchy with a king is it more of a democracy where they have elected rulers at Council like Town Council is it a the church is in charge so it's a what do you call that oh my gosh the heck is it when the church is in charge theocracy holy freaking crap theocracy hey look at that the phone helped me or do you have a theocracy you want to know the name of the ruler or the rulers or if there's a council or something and maybe not all the members of the council maybe not all of the members of the Congress but at least important members have some details about the military and the guards how many are are there what types of soldiers are there what weapons do they carry what armor do they wear what uniforms do they have on these are things that are probably going to come up when your players travel to that City what are the basic laws and punishments what is the total population how big is the city what's the city structure like is there a wall around this city is the city split up into Wards or districts if so what are they and what are they named usually they're awards for lower class folk middle class nobility and then Wards for the docs if on a Coast or a river and commerce is there a predominant architecture throughout the city and if so what is it and then you want to have yourself a map you need a basic map that shows the locations of major landmarks and the specific locations you create okay now what locations should you create these are my recommendations for specific locations that you should create in advance because characters are very likely to go to them or at least ask about them at some point taverns you want about three of these or maybe more ideally one for each district or ward of the city that give a distinct flavor to them I have one Tavern where there's a giant barkeep and he just passes the food and the trays all the way across the tavern because his arms are so long also determine basic services at the taverns and how much they cost ends pretty much the same as above you want to have one or more Inns in each of the different districts you want to have their basic services and how much they cost and remember too that oftentimes Inns and taverns are one of the same and many times has food and Ale and all the sorts of amenities that a Tavern would have different shops at a minimum you need these shops some place where they can buy weapons and armor common adventuring gear Food Supplies potions and spell components horses and wagons and carts and you know magic stuff if you have it in your game world where they can actually buy magic I I personally don't do that but lots of people do need to think about what goods are available at those shops and what they cost I often just shortcut this by just using stuff directly from the player's handbook as far as like what's available and what they cost I mean most things in the player's handbook are generally available available in a large city that's just kind of a given but you could obviously detail this out a whole lot and get very very specific about what's available in all the different shops and what they cost if you wanted to and then you want to have a General market this is kind of a catch-all area that has a variety of booths in case the characters want to buy something that you didn't create a shop in advance for basically you just say that they're able to find someone in the market who has a booth set up for X thing and that they want to buy or sell a palace or a castle a place where the ruler or central government is housed players will either ask about it or visit it eventually consider what protection and guards are about it which may be relevant when PCS are visiting a guard post and barracks characters will at some point seek out the guards for some reason or another so make sure you know what weapons armor and uniform they wear you know so you can describe them to your players when they ask because they probably will ask and even if they don't you should still describe them you need to have a prison because characters I don't know often sometimes end up there eventually though I must say that manage changing such a situation is very precarious you know arresting players and taking players to prison because it can cause some issues at the game table I have found but that's probably a topic for a different day temples and churches this not only adds Flair but it always comes up in my games at one point or another a player who worships X deity asks if there is a temple to that deity in the city also characters will eventually seek out healing or other Priestly magical Aid and want to buy healing potions so you know know what spells the clerics there can cast and how much they cost and the same for healing potions a sage and or wizard the group is often going to seek out information and or purchase or learn spells so know in advance what subjects this Sage is an expert on and how much they charge to share their knowledge and if it's a wizard of course you want to know what spells they can cast and how much they charge usually different spellables cost different prices of course a library when the sage or wizard can't answer questions the group will look elsewhere this is where the library comes in of course so know what the base cost is to access the library because you usually don't get in for free not in the ancient world this is books and learning and stuff is expensive and a very prized commodity so it's going to cost you a basic service to get into the library be able to look around and I usually have a second higher cost if the group wants to have the assistance of a librarian or aide who will help them find what they're looking for faster and potentially get them even better information than if they had done it alone a bank this may or may not apply based on your world and game setting for instance if you're in eberron there are definitely Banks but Forgotten Realms maybe not except in the greatest in most developed cities like waterdeep probably has a bank I would guess and have an idea of the protections the bank has on its Vault characters will either ask because they want to know their gold is safe or they will want to break in also listen to your players chatter if they mention they're going to go to X or Y place but don't do it in that current game session and you know you haven't prepared that place for them then make sure you create those places in advance for the next game session oh and if you're wondering what the best tool to use is for detailing all of these different things out that you're fleshing out for your city-based campaign I highly recommend using OneNote or Evernote for this sort of thing I made a video that goes over how I use OneNote to organize my games which in turn saves me time at the game table it's titled top 10 time saving tools for Dungeon Masters okay now on to NPCs we made locations but we didn't make NPCs to populate those locations so for each one of those locations you fleshed out you're probably going to want to have at least one NPC now some locations beg for more such as taverns you probably want to have the owner who's off in the bar keep a waiter or waitress a bouncer or two a local who frequents the joint and then perhaps a Minstrel for a temple you probably want to have a high priest but also an Aqua Light who will be the character's primary contact for the guard Barracks there's almost certainly a captain or Commander that may become relevant but mostly there should be a lower ranking Sergeant or the like who will be the group's primary contact and the same for the palace or Castle there is of course a king or ruling Council or the light but the characters aren't likely to encounter or meet with them except in extraordinary circumstances so you need a primary contact perhaps an advisor or a simple clerk now listen carefully creating stat blocks for every NPC is a trap most NPCs will just use the commoner stat block for exceptional NPCs just pick a stat block from the monster manual or another resource and write it down you do not need unique stat blocks for everyone that's just crazy how much time you're gonna spend creating unique stat blocks for every NPC in the in the entire city the vast majority of which will never become relevant and you will never need to use those step blocks save yourself some time and headache just use the commoner stat block or for very unique NPCs pick a pre-existing one out of the monster manual or elsewhere you know I I rarely myself consider stat blocks for NPCs and attempt if it even becomes relevant I'll decide in the moment if they are just a commoner because most NPCs are or if it makes sense for them to have like the noble or veteran stat blocked or ones I go to a lot too now some game Masters groan when we talk about NPCs because in their experience players just want to kill them all so what's the point sometimes they think though that the players killing NPCs is in part the game Master's fault at times because like a question that I ask and sometimes as I've seen in games as well is that the NPCs aren't really very likable I mean they're kind of annoying little pricks that are negatively predisposed toward the characters and if all of your NPCs are annoying and they're negatively predisposed toward the characters and they aren't likable then you should expect the players to want to kill them and take all their stuff but if you are creating likable NPCs who are positively predisposed toward the PCS unless they have reason to not be then you're probably going to get a different response from your players of course if they still insist on killing NPCs you can always introduce consequences for their actions which I do recommend end in fact I have an entire video that talks about how to deal with murder hobos that you can check out culture and background events so building in culture and background events into your city campaign can add amazing flavor to your game and make it much more interesting for culture consider the lifestyle of the populace commoners to Nobles how do they dress what are their Customs do they have any special slang words that they use consider background events that take place holidays and festivals special events that are going on in the city that you can describe to your players by the way if you're interested in more information about fleshing out a city or town trial and Trust the September 2022 issue of Lair magazine has an article in it titled creating a settlement it goes over topics such as political or government structures military taverns and the like and includes tables that detail the various options you have click on the screen right here to learn how to create plot hooks that your players won't ignore and six pitfalls to avoid or to pick up a DNA or Patron and get an issue of layer magazine seen every month and play D D with me and until next time best of wishes with your next city campaign they really are tons of fun

Channel: the DM Lair

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Keywords: d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd 5th edition, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, rpg, role-playing game, roleplaying game, dungeon master tips, DM tips, dungeon master advice, DM advice, the dm lair, luke hart, dnd city campaign, dnd city encounters, rpg city campaign, rpg city encounters, dnd city ambience, dnd city music, dnd city

Id: P1_u48p1gJA

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023