How to bring your D&D Cities to Life | D&D Beyond

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comments because i am watching uh we did we did two streams about uh building a d d city where we built a city with chat which i really really love so make sure you guys go check those out uh if you haven't seen them you built a twisted broken horrible death trap of a town and i absolutely love you for it uh but someone in the comments of the youtube vod was like hey this is cool and all but i feel like uh when i dm never really pop when like my players go to a new town or to like an exciting you know an an exciting new locale uh my theater of the mind never really like pops and it's not very immersive and it's very like this is this place and now you're here what would you like to do um so i thought it would be cool to do um a a video about like hey what are some i gather two of my favorite dms together uh to sort of put together some you know some tips and tricks and some thoughts around how to really make uh your party visiting a city like really immersive and how to really up your theater of the mind game and your description game uh uh to jump into that and just make it really like high value uh for players i want you to picture that death trap you built absolutely like really if you feel it you made this now you live in it exactly yeah sorry this is from my brain and now um you know i i very much wish i had the the the butter melty voice of matt mercer and his ability to just paint a beautiful picture just with with the simple like like the he can just exhale and i go i can see it um and i have to imagine though that's partly because he's he sold his soul a long time ago for d no i think that i i get the impression from alexandria that matt has been building alexandria for a very very very long time and kind of has this world as head so i think it's like almost like if if you know someone who builds model trains in their basement and you go down in their basement and you're never coming back first of all but if you go down in their basement they'll tell you all the things like oh this is the area that i built and this is what i did and this is what i worked on and like they've got a lot of thoughts on it because they've been spent this has been their hobby for so long and spending their time to it so i feel like with mercer alexandria he's got this world it's not like he just started playing this world with his with his with this group as we all know they're a long standing home game but also i i just feel like xander is his model train in the basement where he just knows this world inside and out and i think that as audience members we can sometimes get discouraged by that because we don't we haven't been building this town for this world for 20 years we might make a lot of us are are starting uh if we're running a new campaign we might be running a campaign out of a book using a setting that's already existed or whatnot or something we're homebrewing for the first time or within a few months so i i think that like that's i'm sorry that i cut you off joe but i think that's like my feeling about like it's kind of like if you are a new acting student you don't go well i'm not never gonna i'm not as good as as meryl streep or someone you're like yeah but that's because she's been doing it for so long and she's the best at it right so yeah oh go ahead if i can add anything to that it's if someone does invite you into their basement to look at their model train collection uh think about it hard before you do um i have concerns the the trick there uh is that my dad's is in the garage which is not a basement garage it's on the same level as the rest of the house i feel safer uh so it's just it's just much safer and there's a clear way out i think a basement garage would be a pretty unless you're like living in like a building that has like a sub-terrain like that's a pretty inconvenient place to put a garage for most houses i think that's more of like an x-men jet hanger yeah over top and yeah um 100 when i said model train in the basement i was picturing that guy from mighty wind that's like bringing like uh catherine o'hara's husband at the town of crab yeah that's 100 i want to see crabtown in the winter like that's 100 what i imagined in my head it's close to uh to my dad's setup um but so then i think the nice thing about that sort of uh that discouragement of like man i you know i have a hard time just naturally bringing these places to life and i do um uh uh you can cheat there's lots of little techniques and and little cheats that uh that you can do for yourself um that that can really just be nice shortcuts um to just adding a couple of extra levels uh to your storytelling that i think your table will really appreciate um and the the simplest one i kind of wanted to jump into was um uh it's in two steps uh and the first step is uh to write down at the top of a piece of paper or you know however your dm setup is whether it's like a stack of spiral notebooks that look like all kidnap letters you know like like i write when i when i'm just like oh we gotta go here right now uh yeah just all full ransom note style uh but the first is to put a reminder at the top of something that's just always visible for you whether it's just eye line with your dm screen uh or wherever uh is is that it's okay to pause and think it is okay to pause take a breath you know if your players are like we want to go into this bistro what's it look like you don't owe them an immediate like oh well you see the reclaimed beams coming down and blah blah it's okay to kind of take that moment and ask yourself like what does this place look like then after that pause um uh under that reminder uh which i have anytime i dm uh i just have the five senses listed and um i try to answer a question about one of the five senses with a description and i think that that's a real nice simple easy trick uh to immersing yourself in a city it's the difference between uh what i always go back to from my life is when i first moved from bowling green kentucky to san francisco uh with everything i owned in like two suitcases like i nobody was with me my i got off the plane my buddy was like hey i know i said i was gonna meet you uh uh i'm late so just go to our apartment and um i'd never really been in a big city before i got off at market street in the middle of san francisco like at like the busiest hour all of a sudden more people than i had ever seen in one place like in my life just all over the place and to me that's what immersion in a big city like feels like and if i can give that experience to a player i think that's really cool so it's like it's it's the difference between being like man you're in the city block and it's super crowded to um it's you're in the city block and you're overwhelmed by uh what's it sound like it's a symphony of voices um it's a million people all talking over each other at the same time to be heard um it's uh you you step into this place and you think there's a storm at first but then you realize it's just traffic whether that's horse and carriage or cars or whatever your game is uh that you're playing or if it's there's an overwhelming smell uh where i was able to afford in san francisco there was an overwhelming smell it was urine and uh on a good day very good fair um uh you know so if if that's you know uh that smell or on the opposite side if this is a friendly sweet town and you're trying to get across the idea of safety maybe it just smells like baked goods you know the the hot doughnut sign that krispy kreme is lit in this town uh so pick a sense and and and answer a question about it um is is my favorite first like go-to trick just to add a little layer um of immersion and now i demand tricks from the two of you and a tribute and a tribute yeah absolutely i think that picking a sense is a really clever idea as well something that actually came up for me recently i was a player in a game um and it was in the black dice society and we entered into an area of ravenloft that one of our players was just like a huge fan of in lore um so b dave walters the gm offered the player to describe it and was like what do you see in front of you and that was something that like totally in the moment i was just like wow that's really cool uh and i i love still being able to be surprised in this game i think that's my favorite but like he he set a tone for like here is the location here are the basic structures of what you can do but like what are you experiencing right now uh was such a cool way to do it too and it might buy you a minute as well if you need that moment to take a breath you can let your player and be like hey you know what is what does this environment kind of look like to you what are you seeing if you're at a dark carnival in ravenloft uh and then you can build off of what your players kind of given you to work with and you know that you're giving them something that they want to see here in this moment i thought that was really special that was a cool moment recently yeah no i i it's an absolutely a tool that i forget all the time is is that idea that you're telling a story with your players at your table and you're not necessarily responsible for like every nook and cranny of the experience that's happening um yeah i i think you're exactly right not only does it buy you a little bit of time but you you uh your player has given you something that they are now invested in maybe a little more than what you would have given to them because it came from them and now you can turn it against them um uh which is is my fa you know backstory isn't the only thing that you can turn into a brutal weapon of of terror uh against your players you can turn this uh if they're like oh um you know i see uh i see uh in in this like marketplace there's um there's this guy selling it what looks to be like magical items over there then oh i'm taking and i'm running with it like not only did i not think about a magical item table in the middle of uh in the middle of this part of the square but yeah let's run with it like that's fun uh you're gonna you're gonna buy a couple monkeys pause my friend um super fun idea riley do you have any uh thoughts tips tricks yeah i i think i love that i love letting players build something especially if they're already i mean because like there's kind of two different ways that characters will experience a city in a game right sometimes you're starting the game in that city and it's your home city for your characters so you're giving them the ability to like kind of build that home for themselves and what their characters are doing normally and then there's also coming upon the city for the very first time and so that's a very different experience of if they're just passing through somewhere or if it's part of the adventure and a lot of times i i will admit this is actually a thing that i struggle with which is why i'm glad we're doing this conversation because i'm not the best at describing things physically i'm really not like i the amount of times i just throw the word filigree out even though i don't think i 100 know what filigree actually means i i will say or i'll say like bespoke or something like i'm good at like adjectives that don't 100 convey the information to the people that i want to i honestly like i'm i'm not i'm not afraid to steal like i i just when i'm when i'm dm'ing especially it's so it's not unlike when you make an npc or something along those lines i think that what i will do a lot of times is i'll think ahead of time about what i want the city to be like if i know the characters are going to a specific city and then i will just like google images of like a place that evokes that kind of imagery in my mind and then i will just like look at a picture and start to describe what i'm seeing in that picture and then just adding some things like a great example of it that wasn't me is that one of my like a game i played a while ago was set in water deep and the dm who ran it was from seattle and he just made water deep into fantasy seattle and so it made it really easy to to bring art to understand where our characters fit in that world because he just took what he knew of seattle and found ways to make it like these really interesting like twists on like what like what would you find in seattle what would you find in the fantasy version of that so you had this kind of like like hippie like like intersectional kind of thing happening but you also had like a section that was like a little more like like the humans district that were like being like persnickety about the dwarves and things like that and it just made this really cool interesting vibe going that's super fun i i love that and uh you guys watching uh hey thank you for being here uh appreciate it uh if you've got questions comments concerns uh drop them into the chat and i want to make sure that that we get into them uh because you guys are uh uh part of this part of this conversation uh so please yeah drop just drop those into chat models mods will get them to me and uh and we'll answer as best we can uh riley i think you bring up an amazing point um which sort of follows along this line of like it's okay to cheat um use what you know um if your players are uh in like uh a park or um an an office you know a building full of different little like offices or something like that use what you know um why necessarily like make up a place oh wholesale when like you know what park i still remember like vividly was uh cherokee park in louisville kentucky the park that we'd always go hang out in in high school i still i remember every spot i remember um i remember the statue where shady things would happen i remember the the statue where like uh kids had like their first kiss and you know stuff like that and the fountains around it um you know i i remember where people would like play ultimate frisbee and stuff like that i'll drop terry that's one of my short hand go-to's i'll drop cherokee park the fantasy version in there you know all the time yeah i think it's a super super good idea yeah because that's the thing about world building is that if you want to make a place feel lived in like why not pull from things that you know are lived in like you mentioned like that that's where the kids make out because like yeah every city is gonna be different from every other city and they're gonna but they're all gonna have a few things that are in common or things that are relatively universal and like like yeah a park a place where the local youths go to hang out and get into maybe a little bit of trouble you're going to have we mentioned a bazaar you're going to have some place that the residents go to do shopping whether it's a bazaar or whether it's like a just a market whether it's like a general good store you know you think about that you think about like how big is this city what types of things is it going to have and like what kind of provisions are common there and then you're off to the races i feel like i think that's where like i think you get those few basic ideas and then you compare it to the climates that they're in and you kind of imagine that like i don't know like we talked about mercer and i just recently listened to the episode of critical role where they're in isil cross and they're looking and then they're looking for provisions and it's just a gargantuan who just like makes meat and just like she just like sells meat and she just has a room that's just like me like because they're not a city it's just a fort so she just has this this room full of meat of oh it's just wolves and mammoths and she says here's the meat it tastes like meat that's what it like that's and that's that character and that's what would be in that area as opposed to being like oh here's our entire list of like smoked and fine finer reads and stuff like that no absolutely uh i have a uh oh sage i muted myself my bad hi uh i'm referencing like cheat sheets as well i think that something that is like a reminder is like it's okay to write your intro to this town you can write it down in advance and you can read it off to them and there's no like it doesn't have to be improvised off the top of your head like um you know i i've done this and i've had gm's that i absolutely love that did this where it's just like you know what i'm gonna give myself a really self-indulgent moment for the first minute that we enter into this city where i get to really describe this thing that i saw and give myself something to work off of so it's like don't be afraid to give yourself that cheat sheet as well of something that like you really want to have this like i really want to describe it well but then when players are there and they're asking questions and i'm trying to improvise it off the top of my head suddenly i'm like yeah there's a building there it's fine you can go in it do what you want i think that like i have trouble with the like self-indulgent feeling a lot of the time in jamming sometimes i'll be like i just want to make it about you guys i want you to do whatever you want but like i know when when i'm a player how much richer it makes the game to have that gm take a minute and really give us what what they want that world to be um so like take your moment and if it means like writing your moment in and like setting it out for yourself uh that's a perfectly fine cheat sheet as well absolutely yeah take that take that intro and then the first moment that they're like what's that house that wasn't in that intro don't panic say you know ask yourself a question and if you want to write questions down for yourself and just pull from them this is something else that i do um uh you know what does your grandparents house look like what does your partner's grandparents house look like just pick a grandparent's house and that's the house you know and then all of a sudden you have this fully realized place that doesn't just like have a description attached to it it has a very genuine real feeling attached to it because there there's a different tone in your voice when you describe a place that's important to you uh even the sort of fantasies fantasy eyes version of it right then when you're just sort of like going off the dome um it's just sort of inherent um i have a question uh for you both um riley you'll dig this one too sage you're allowed to answer it too i guess whatever i better be better than mine will be yeah i don't know we'll find out we'll find i'm gonna pit the two of you against each other and only the winner are you gonna ask us if elder brains have a sense of smell because that seems like that's sorry go ahead i didn't know it was that was from that was from chat um so spell hawks press asks what's a great way to have a wild magic surge affect your city uh sometimes they like to steal from movies like weird science or jumanji well i think that's a great thing like i think again i'm all for cheating and stealing so i think that if you i and i you know i just wrote that whole thing about one division recently about how like if you have a wild magic search i i love to actually with wild magic i love to look for other people's wild magic charts that they post on the internet or i also like to kind of like think about my own and so yeah riley is a thief i'm fine with it i'm a i'm cool with that someone in the chat i yeah i love i think that it's great to kind of look at what other people are doing with wild magic and then kind of build your own idea of what wild magic is and then just compile a list it doesn't even have to be a hundred it can just be like 10 to 20 things and then when a wild magic search happens roll on that chart and like let some fun happen with it so yeah i think that if there's if there's a pop culture thing that you love that is affected by some sort of random chaotic magic use a version of it it's fine and i think jumanj's a great example of because there's so many different things that happen in those stories right there there's there's like the floor becoming quicksand there's there's monkeys in the kitchen they're like make them knowles no one's gonna know it's fine yeah and i think yeah making those uh interactive uh uh four-year players you know to to go off that jumanji route um even if it's not something that's going to be like oh this is going to turn into a quest and a whole thing you know if it's like you know if it's from jumanji you know rhinos are in the apartment now you know what happens when you do something similar when your players are just trying to shop uh you know that kind of thing i think that's that's super super fun we can have fun with that too if your game is a little more light-hearted you can kind of make it a running gag then that like from then on there's just like occasionally chaos happening as the rhinos i have not like if you've got guards trying to catch the rhinos and failing you can be like in the middle of scenes and then you can just have like the rhinos come running by in the background while the guards are chasing him and then the players have the opportunity then to make that part of the story of like oh we're gonna use this chaos that was caused by the rhino train to be our like the distraction we're gonna use to sneak into this location we're trying to get into absolutely sage you're wildly amazing what's your what are your wild magical oh stop it um you know i mean it depends on kind of the tone of your game like my brain went to two different things for some reason when you were like a wild magic surge hits a town uh the first thing my brain said was it turns it into candy candyland um i don't i couldn't tell you why but that is the first thing that happened in my brain and then the second one was invasion of the body snatchers um and if that doesn't summarize uh my my two people inside my brain i don't know what does um but yeah i mean honestly and putting that in might give you a tool as well to be like oh i didn't really establish what this city is like whoops well the wild magic has accidentally made it narnia yeah i am now describing narnia i don't think i have ever described something in a ttrpg game that i'm not picturing from a video game or a movie or something in my real life well and i think that just reiterates the idea of like because i'm the same way we are three people that aren't great at just locations off the dome doing a video about how best to do locations off the dome and um well i mean i think that's why it's a great conversation to have because if we were all great at it then we're like well why don't you care the video is why don't you be better at it hey you want to know how to do this better just be better at it just do it just do it wrong i'm uh well i mean riley you've been in games with me where i'm pretty sure i described the size of something in comparison to how many arby's you could fit into it like i'm not good at that i'm not good at like okay yeah here's yeah here's how big something is you know i so i i need cheats like this um rakio 407 asks what's a good list of carnival games for a for an in-game oh man i'm playing in a carnival right now well i would you know i would always start with like um again what what do you know so it's like what's your favorite carnival game i'll i would i'll always start there um you know i i think it's just there's just something really engaging about um uh you taking uh your favorite time at a carnival and like converting that uh to your table i think there's just something extra even if you can't feel it i think your players will feel just a little bit oomph yeah i also i i like going the opposite way of it too is i think of what are some skill checks and then what are some carnival games i can build around those skill checks so if i know that i have a character in my party who's like a tough like like a beefy girl or beefy boy um or beefy they i i will find you know i mean obviously the most obvious answer to that is the the hammer and the bang but like if you can think of something i actually i recently did a in my my therapist game that i that i was running last fall we we had a festival happening in the skull of ale where the uh seders were and i essentially made an animated the mechanical bull right basically i had like a like a stuffed mittar thing that the characters would and so it was basically a series of of saving throws to see how long they could stay on the bull and then like the winner was whoever got to stay on the longest and it's similar like you can get drinking games like that or you can get you know you're making skilled checks for how many you can throw in how many balls you can throw in a roll to knock over the the jugs and things like that you just it's really simple to think of what are common games and think of what our standard skill checks and all you do is just make the dc of the skill check get progressively higher as they go to see how well they're able to successfully keep doing the check yeah i think if i was setting up a like a segment of carnival games i would set up one targeted for each player at the table um like you referenced of like having that like beefy character that wants to do the strength test if you have an archer in the party like i'm picturing ren fair style archery booth you know and letting them kind of take the thing that they do in like battle as a hero and put it in this like trivial carnival version of it i think could be really really fun so i would be like all right we've got five stalls ahead of us and let them kind of figure out which one is for them where it's like okay so this one has a setup of targets and arrows it looks to be like a kind of uh janky wooden set of arrows and a bow and someone's like oh wait no that one's for me and like the moment when they realize that there's like something individual for each of them is really fun in a party um or uh they completely screw it up and that's what they say yeah you pick up the arrow and you're just like all right man i guess you're doing strong man then it could be so fun to make the players do the thing that's like not normally their thing and then and it's like it's a lower stakes version of it because it's a carnival but there is something about when you throw a carnival skill check in i i've never had a player not think it mattered like i've never had a player be like this is just dumb gamer doing like they get really into it and excited about it and it's really fun yeah absolutely the um the only other uh exercise i have and then we have a couple of other like cool questions from chat that i want to jump into and then i set you free my friends um i set you free from uh from a pain of uh being in a virtual world with me i do have one more thought about about world building when i get to that but if you want to say your last thing first like before we move on the only other uh this is the other exercise i have that i think sort of goes along with what sage was saying about like you know write about your place a little bit you know take that moment write those three or four pertinent sentences you know about a locale and um a trick that i like to use for writing that i've talked about it a little bit um with uh with jeremy uh when he came on we talked about uh traps um and sort of like using the environment for combat but i think it works well here too um and that's making a decision about three things in your environment uh the immediate environment the general environment and the larger environment and so what i mean by that is like the media is literally like what is like right here uh the general is what's this sounds very dumb and not very artfully described the general is well it's a little bit further out and then the larger is like what sort of like in the in the world sort of going on outside uh so my favorite example one of my favorite examples of that uh as it sort of turns to the the fantasy genre is the prancing pony in in brie in uh fellowship of the rings your um uh your immediate environment for frodo and his party is that cramped little table uh where you know it's it's smished in it's probably splintery it's old you know it it doesn't really provide any uh any comfort uh the amount of drinks uh almost like covers the table so it's you know it's not very adequate it's very cramped um the larger environment is uh or sorry the general environment is um is the bar itself which is just full of people with that are kind of like staring at you a little shifty but then there's also like heat from this fire that's competing so the the atmosphere feels very cold but then this fireplace you're next to sort of is competing with that and almost like trying to like uh jab warmth into that coldness um and then um your larger environment what's going on outside of that well the most obvious thing is across the way uh this creepy dude in a cloak and a pipe is just like um mean mugging frodo right um so that's that's one of my favorite sort of go-to's for it so and you also have the detail of the city walls being closed at night and like how hard it is like there's a re this town is a little bit afraid of what's right outside its walls when the sun goes down so like that's that's a huge detail for that town absolutely yeah so i think uh that's something i really like practicing doing is is answering those three questions uh for a place that can really give uh not only some immersion but also some options and sort of sort of side po are sort of guidelines of uh you know because when your players enter a place they're also like what do we do here and what are we supposed to do here how am i supposed to feel and they're sort of looking to you to answer some of those questions not necessarily like ram them towards one but just to like offer those options absolutely i think that going into a new city sometimes if you're not there for a particular thing if it wasn't hey go to the city and talk to this person but you're traveling through somewhere there is that feeling a lot of the time as a player before you get there and you're like okay i don't know does somebody want to like get dinner or something um so setting out beforehand something i like to ask myself is like well what does this place need to make them feel to get them to the next thing does it need to make them feel like they're not welcome here so that they figure out what's wrong or does it need to make does the town feel like uh everyone is low and depressed and they need to figure out what the blight is causing like what is causing the blight on this town so like if they're not welcome here the table's a little too cramped like that you know everything's a little too small everyone's staring at you too much the temperature is is uncomfortable in some capacity um those things that make you feel like you shouldn't be here or like oh you know it looks like there's a stage in this tavern um it looks like it hasn't been used in years right like why has there been no bard at this tavern why has no one been performing why is it so quiet in this city where has the joy gone and who has caused it yeah are the floors clean are they like movie theater feeling floors are your feet like sticking you know like that that's that's a great sense to play with as well riley that was going to be kind of building on what stage just said was the thought that i had that i was holding on to was that we're talking a lot about physical and sensory elements to a town but people are an extremely important part of a town and if you are like myself and you're a gm who thinks a lot more in in character ideas and story ideas you can do very simple things like sage just said like do you have the sense that you're not welcome here or is the town depressed if you are someone who is more actively thinking about character stuff you can really convey a lot about a town's environment and the town's feeling based on how the people who live in that town are behaving when you're there so if you go into a shop and you just you include even if you're just describing it just the detail of the towns keep like the the shopkeepers being a little bit anxious or surprised to see you or even just like shifting their eyes around a little bit when you're asking questions or vice versa if they're very welcome and they're live and they're just very excited like and they're like yes please like maybe too excited maybe a little bit like what someone's here like what are we gonna do like this is great we have like in my one of my home games that i play in we have this thing where we it's a salt marsh game and one time in one game one of our players was like trying to talk to he was trying to get in to talk to the town council and there was like a woman joyce who's like the administrative assistant of the of the council named joyce and he brought her a coffee and she was like so grateful for and now it's just a thing where almost every time we're in salt marsh again and we're looking for information he goes and he gets a choice of coffee and basically flirts with her and like talks to her about information and it gives us such an idea of what the tone of this town is which is this very like it's very just like middle of the road mundane a lot of administrative things going on and like a lot of like so like there's this like just put upon secretary who's essentially like feeding things through and that tells you so much about how the town council operates how information is dispersed throughout the town and just the overall tone of the city as opposed to if she was just like beleaguered and put upon and just frustrated and exhausted then you're like a lot of bad stuff is happening here and what do we got to figure out so yeah a bar keep can tell you so much about a town just by the way they're carrying themselves because like you know it's like the traditional you go into a town and you end up in a tavern but the way that the bar keep carries themselves to me could tell you in the easiest way everything someone needs to know about like the tone of that city or if there's more than one tavern and like why is why is this town like there's like maybe like the shady tavern there's the more hoity-toity tower like that can tell you a lot about the distinction between social classes in that town absolutely that's a great point um let's see here i've got got two more that that uh that i want to jump in here in here uh simpleson says uh uh is asking and and i'm interested in trying to tackle this from like a uh from a describing the environment sort of immersion angle uh how do you fit uh an npc's backstory uh including family and other sort of major things uh if you haven't prepared instead of just saying oh well that instead of just saying oh they don't have one so uh you know if you're kind of just off the cuff like introducing an npc uh or something like that how can you sort of like use the environment around them to give a sense of of backstory and instead of just maybe just being you know kind of being like i don't know they're just a person and they're on their own and kind of whatever i i think that your earlier advice joe of just being willing to take a breath and take a step back and think about it is is the way to go with that and i think it's the same tools that you will use as a dm to react when players make decisions that you weren't expecting because it's it's i guess i come from an improv background so this might be a little bit like more in my wheelhouse anyway which is basically just like pause and go okay if this is true then where where does that come from and just kind of like be willing to take a step or two back and go look i i i it's hard without like a concrete example of of what it is but like if let's say someone's like oh why how'd you open this store then you take a pause and go well why would someone have this particular shop and then you'd like got it from my dad cool what happened to your dad king took him like like and you're you probably do have ideas about your city beforehand so just kind of take the things you've already thought of for your city to be true and then just imagine what it's what just take it take a breath and go okay so like if i know this is a city where there is some shady business happening it has been for a while then this character who's running this shop and they're like their their dad disappeared or dad was was arrested or something like that happened like boom there's the next step so it's i think it's just a matter of taking a pause just thinking okay based on what i've already got and what this is how can i marry those two and then take a step forward so yeah um and i i think uh something interesting you just said too is uh um there's always that moment where you can stop needing to have information too you know like uh what happened to your dad they're gone like what happened to them they were taken by who i don't know i don't and not only does that like give you some cool intrigue and like hook for your players and your players are going to be kind of like ooh what's up with this it also buys you some time because now you got to wait you got another week or two weeks or you know however often right and also characters don't have to answer honestly like if someone came into my shop and started to ask me really personal questions about my life and i don't know who they were i'm not gonna be like oh well here's all the it's not like law and order where you're carrying boxes around like wow that one came down to the docks this week like people can be cagey and shady and like yes your characters could cast stone of truth and really kind of screw you but you also can choose not to answer just have the character get like especially especially now if someone comes in and casts magic on me and demands that i tell them things about my life i'm especially gonna be like i'm we're not we're not doing business anymore i have a tendency maybe it's maybe it's too much skyrim or whatever but i do have a tendency to just like it's the friendly helpful npc i you you walked too close to them and they said this castle's been here for 150 years and you're like thanks thanks friend dude but think about that caterpillar in in labyrinth who tells jennifer connelly to go the wrong way and that's like such a great example of an npc that has information but gives the wrong information to the protagonist right away yeah i think that's really fun to like have that person who's like a plant uh to kind of bait and switch them there's also that possibility too of like they start asking too many questions and you go the shopkeep puts up a sign and ushers you out the door like you've asked too many questions you've you know you can't do business here now so if you don't have anything you can set up that like oh god there's now a mystery around that and yeah now you're gonna have to figure out what that mystery is but like they wall up and and they you know close up shop now you notice doors slamming of businesses all the way down the street lights going off yeah practically you've made this decision because you don't know yeah but but now you you've turned that into into a huge creative choice which which is so cool um and it buys you time to figure out what that mystery actually is you're like yeah good i have time to do this now and you know my only other thought with that is you know the another sort of thing that again we talked about earlier is is just just pick what you know um you know if if you're trying to uh get across some some character backstory and stuff like that uh is there a weird set of you know did you have like an ant or something that collected those spoons you know the spoons you guys know the spoons and now they have the spoons and they're clearly like prominently displayed and there's the spoons and so when you're carrying i don't have the spoons for that spoons yeah yeah i just don't got the spoons for it um uh when someone's like what's up with the spoons now you can talk about the spoons and just your aunt becomes a fantasy character uh in this in the tale of these spoons uh one last question uh and then we'll get out of here i dig this uh to sort of sum everything up i think gremlins live asks how how in depth should you go when describing a city so when's enough enough when's too much too much oh man i think it depends on the city and it depends on the table i think if you have a table of players that are very new to dnd really in-depth descriptions can help them a lot in particular if you've got players that like wouldn't know what to do when they get to a town like look i've got a table i play with on friday nights and like as soon as we get somewhere i'm sorry you are gonna have no time to describe that city we are already setting something on fire and that kind of players like you have to to know your players to that extent but a group of people who are like i don't really know what i would do when i get there you know we're just kind of set loose in this town giving those in-depth descriptions and putting like flecks of intrigue on a few different buildings to give them that choice um i i just think it varies so much i thought john roy's recent piece on the site on dnd beyond about building an immersive immersive world without being boring was really helpful for a lot of that kind of stuff like learning how to like keep that balance because in the same way i i also i'm garbage at reading off a description even if i wrote it like i find that when i you give me a wall of text i i start getting like mumbly mouth and mealy mouthed over it and start like just like i i talk too fast i'm not a good cult reader so like if you give me a line and stuff to recite great if you even if i write a paragraph i i'm halfway through the paragraph and i'm like this is bad i'm doing it bad so it's hard for me really to describe so i in that regard i i like maps a lot more than descriptions but obviously like that depends on your table as well if your players like maps if you're it's easier to get to maps or not um i i do have a tendency when i know that i'm gonna have a city in a story or a town i do tend to search for a map at least to have an understanding of what i want it to look like so i think that i i tend to be more visually oriented especially for newer players because i think it's really hard for newer players to to get that theater of the mind going at first um but yeah i think i think the sage is right that it really does depend on the level of experience the players and also what the players like energy is and some some people you have players that have been that will ask you every possible question they can about the city that you're in and if you know you have a player like that be prepared because it's not going to stop happening so it is yeah it is is very much a thing to be ready for but yeah yeah i think about it oh it says you know you mentioned uh uh really sort of enjoying maps some i wish i could credit but it was a couple weeks ago and twitter twitter runs through you man uh uh uh someone someone was like my trick if i just need a map handy and nothing's prepped uh google um uh uh shopping mall maps yeah yeah i did see that on twitter yeah for the layout like multi-level yeah so so good and just yeah just pretend that like you know the the the concourse area the walking through area is is road or or you know however you want to do it but i i thought that was so calls going down yeah i also do you want to say that i think your players will let you know when they feel like they've gotten enough information on that when you start describing the city when you just get to something in the city that sparks something for them when you describe the right building or stall or npc that stands around they'll be like oh i want to go talk to that person or i'm heading to you know i'm heading to get food or i'm heading to the shop because i need a potion i know i need to see an herbalist right yeah um a lot of the time each player has like a little something that they want to accomplish when they get to a town especially if they've been traveling or you're kind of in that coming out of an in-between stage i think they will cut you off like i don't know any table of players that will like just let you go for that long ever like an embarrassing amount of time yeah i think uh you know i guess my sort of last thought is um uh in depth is and how in depth is is an important question but i i think um no matter how in-depth you go whether it's like a couple of lines and you're sort of making it up as you go along or you have prepared like a paragraph or two to really get into this place um i i think just keep in mind at make sure you're asking yourself like is this a benefit of the game and is this benefit of my my players because your description can be absolutely incredible but if your players are like well is this place a thing and you're kind of like nah is this place a thing nah like always always make sure that you are um you're rewarding your players curiosity about this immersion that you're creating with with moving uh with moving them forward whether it's here's the quest or here's an interesting sort of like side trip always make sure that uh this immersion that we're talking about is in service um of those players hey say ryan where can people find you on the internet oh hey you can find me everywhere on the internet at not stage i stream on my channel every monday wednesday and saturday we do community and spooky games i am also a co-founder of the pixel circus channel we do a bunch of ttrpg content all the dang time it's very very fun i'm also on the official d youtube and twitch channels for the black dice society and on smosh games all the time all amazingly cool stuff please please please go make sure you check it out especially damsel's that's and everything nice it's such a fun show joe came in to be merlin i did and i didn't realize that you could donate to affect the game and make them break into a musical for two minutes it was a thing it was amazing super super fun riley silverman uh my love i miss you so much i can't wait to meet you uh you live like two blocks for me and i haven't seen you in a year uh where can people find you on the internet you can find me on twitter at riley j silverman or on instagram at riley silverman and actually this coming monday is the season finale of the broken pact which is the wizards of the co-sponsor d d show that i do for saving throw a show and then also i am a member of an all-female improv and theatrical collective called ripley improv and we have a brand new show debuting at the beginning of may and on and tomorrow we're announcing what the genre is and what it's going to be and i think it will be very very exciting and i think you will all enjoy it so we're excited to see what happens it's it's make sure you follow us up the alley of a lot of people who are fans of the kind of stuff that we do here perfect perfect yeah make sure you guys are following along two really incredible people who were very lucky to have uh on these panels so and uh we're also very lucky to have you guys thank you so much uh for being here for watching and again uh because i see it in the comments uh in the chat if your if your reaction is like cool i sure wish i had a table go to the dnd be on discord go to our forums there are people that are always looking uh for someone to play with uh uh this game's for everybody you deserve to be able to have that game uh so please uh go go check out those spaces find a group uh jump in and and uh and play and if they're not the right fit find the next one you know it's like finding the right therapist right guys um uh until then though uh we will see you guys uh on thursday here at dean to beyond take care of each other be nice bye d d beyond now fits in the palm of your hand with the free d d beyond app it's the perfect tool set for beginners regular players and seasoned dungeon masters play faster with the guided character creator and access your character sheets spells and abilities wherever you go all of your adventures and source books are at your fingertips even when you're offline easily find and access the rules you need when you need them with more features to come download the free dnd beyond app today

Channel: D&D Beyond

Views: 9,758

Rating: 4.847981 out of 5

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon & Dragons, D&D Beyond, DnD, 5e, Joe Starr, fandom entertainment, screen junkies, honest trailers, dnd, critical role, Saige Ryan, Pixel Circus, Riley Silverman, D&D Cities, How to bring your D&D cities to life - D&D Beyond, D&D Tips, DM Tips, Creating D&D Cities, D&D City, Dungeons and dragons City

Id: 3grxJm5jhdw

Length: 48min 25sec (2905 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021