How to create a city in Dungeons and Dragons

if you want to run a city or a large town in d d perhaps I can help here at Tails Arcane we talk about DND ttrpgs and fantasy world building and in today's video I want to focus on how to develop prepare and run large Urban environments in DND now Pathfinder d d these tips are really system agnostic we can apply them to any ttrpg I'll be using the language of d d throughout this video because d d is the system that I'm most familiar with but again these tips are for any system really that involves fantasy and urban environments we're going to cover three main points firstly we're going to talk about how to develop your City from scratch and make it feel unique and distinct among the other settlements in your world then we're going to talk about districts and how splitting up your city into multiple smaller areas is going to make your life a lot easier when it comes to running the game on the night and finally we'll talk about how much content you actually need to prepare how much is too much and how much content do you need to to run the cities smoothly on the night to Merchants stores items citiguard will cover all of that in depth before we jump into the first of the three points I want to give a really quick shout out to our DND Kickstarter now this is not a promotion or a sponsored thing I just want to see this Kickstarter come to fruition and the people behind it are from my hometown of Glasgow so I really wanted to give them a little bit of support the kickstarter is for a documentary called session zero and the documentary is basically covering three years of the filmmaker's younger brother getting into d d falling in love with the hobby forming a group with his friends to play D D and then playing it continuously across three years it's about what d d has meant for these young people how it's brought them together and kept them together through this very tumultuous time of growing up through their early teenage years the trailer is available you can watch it over on the kickstarter there's a link in the description on this video and just looking at that trailer and seeing these young people getting into d an age far younger than I was when I got into d d and just falling in love with this hobby that we all love really put a smile on my face but anyway thank you for for sitting through my my promotional chat and now let's talk about cities and towns India [Music] if we're going to create and prepare a city we're doing so from the assumption that the players are going to spend some time there if you think your players are likely to just pass through grab some supplies and continue on to some other destination I wouldn't recommend meticulously following all of the steps and tips in this video but if you plan to run a couple of sessions in a city maybe a longer Adventure that takes place in one Urban setting then you're in the right place creating a city in d d for me means two things firstly it means coming up with a physical feature a defining physical aspect of the city it could be something about the location that defines the city and gives it a reason to resist or it could be some element within the city like a particular building around which the rest of the city is growing up the second thing is picking a theme an overall aesthetic and Vibe for the city this is going to Define how the city looks how it feels and what kind of stories you're going to tell there a physical feature could be something like a lake or a river around which the the city of the town has grown up it could be the fact that the city is built on top of a huge floating rock that drifts among the clouds or it could be something a little bit humbler like the fact that the city is built on the intersection of two trading routes something that defines why the city would exist in the first place uh maybe the city is built in the the intersection of Traders or it could be in the The Cliff between two huge mountains making it a very defensible position the point here is that the city shouldn't have just dropped out of the sky and landed in the middle of a random plane there should be some reason where the players can say oh we can kind of see why a city would have been built here of course it doesn't have to be something naturally occurring for example a city might have grown up around our great University uh it could be the fact that the um the city is built around a mine a natural resource which is necessitated the construction of Housing and then of stores and that's kind of spiraled from there to form the city the physical the feature is going to make your city feel a bit different from all the other cities the players have passed through or at least it should do but it's also the why of the city and that's incredibly important for building American and also for giving you ideas later on if you know from the very start that the city is built around an ancient University then you know some more stuff about the flavor of the city and the kind of stories that might be told here in an ancient academic town the second thing you want to come up with is the aesthetic and the theme of the city so for example a city's theme could be that it's an industrial city so instantly we're thinking about foundries and factories Tall Air smoke stacks and chimneys belching black clouds against the sky narrow quite dirty streets but perhaps an intense Trade union scene with large trade unions battling with the Barons of industry and guilds all these kind of elements are mutually kind of coalesce around the idea that this is an industrial Town huge Shipyard suddenly we've got real flavor of an idea of what this city is going to look like that's going to help a lot when it comes to describing to your players visual elements and making them feel that they can see it in front of them but it will also help you when it comes to deciding what kind of businesses are going to be in the town what kind of political situations are playing out another example of a theme could be Gothic my current home game is largely taking place at the moment in a Gothic City so now dark narrow streets Gallows in the Public Square with corpses hanging from them Ravens Wheeling overhead a lot of stores selling Arcane strange occult elements and poisons and potions that theme is going to help to steer you towards developing a city that feels like my God my cat is just yelling outside I have to shut them out during the the filament and they do not like it but anyway yeah that theme is going to be really important and giving your city a unified feel which is going to help the players remember that city as being different from all the others once we have a physical future that makes the city feel distinct from other settlements in the setting and gives it a reason to exist and once we have the aesthetic and the overarching theme of the city be that in an industrial Gothic and academic City or whatever it is it's going to be the kind of defining uh Visual and character of the city we're going to move on to districts breaking your city into districts is going to make your life a lot easier it's going to make prep more effective and it's going to make running the game and navigating the city on the night a lot more intuitive for both you and the players throughout this section I'm going to refer to at times a map of a city that's going to appear behind me and from a city called valwind Heights which appeared in one of my patreon supplements now this is quite a big city with quite a lot of districts you you don't need a map of this detail or you don't need this many districts but this would just be my example throughout this section you want to break your city into a number of districts and give each district and name now in my city here I've got nine districts but you don't need to have night you could have maybe three or four that's a decent number and these are going to be called things like the Merchant's quarter the East End the docklands whatever you want to call them distinct names that indicate perhaps what is in those different districts each area should have its own flavor and theme defined by what the players are going to find in those districts so for example in my city here gutterlin is a sprawling slum where the Thieves Guild operates then you've got candeliers which is kind of the Market District it's quite up Market full of fashionable taverns and restaurants and then you go over to high town and you've got universities colleges it's a bit quieter but there's a lot of students here so that's kind of the the approach you're taking just kind of a theme for each area and a name for each area now why are we doing this the first problem a lot of DMS run into when they start prepping and running big cities is just feeling overwhelmed by having all of this content and not knowing quite how to present it to the players the players arrive in the city and you start thinking do I have to take them through this street by Street do I have to give every street a name and tell that to the players do I have to give them a detailed map with all the individual shops and landmarks marked on that map it can be a lot and it can also be a lot for the players because even if you give them a map they can kind of feel overwhelmed about where they should go first and how to navigate this when you break it into districts what you're doing is creating a number of baskets into which you're going to put content so there's the the basket that is the dark lens the basket that is the temple district and into each of those baskets you'll put a number of of shops landmarks side quests if you want to write Quests for each individual area and the players are never going to explore the city as a whole the players are going to go to each individual basket explore the content within that basket and then move on to another one and that is going to make it a lot more manageable for both the players and for you as the DM when I'm running a city what I have on the night are a bunch of different pages and each page is a different District of the city so when the players tell me that they want to go to gutterlin I grab the page of content that I have forgot to learn it's got the names of NPCs a couple of local stores a couple of local landmarks and maybe some details about the one local Quest that I have prepared for gochlin and that's all I'm going gonna think about until the players tell me that they want to leave Grouchland and go somewhere else in front of the players is a map like this showing them just the the city and the names of the districts so they don't have to worry about what street they're looking for or where they'll find precisely where they'll find a particular Tavern or business they can just ask an NPC in the street hey we're looking for this business and that NPC will say oh you'll find that in Gatlin and then the players will turn to me and say great we want to go to go to learn and I initiate that basket of content the players are never actually experiencing the city as a whole just the individual districts and each individual District runs essentially like a very small town or Village which most DMS wouldn't feel particularly intimidated by when it comes to prepping and running this method I'm recommending is essentially just creating a bunch of villages in terms of your your content behind the DM screen and then meshing them together and making the players feel as though they're experiencing one set as a side note a really fun thing to do to make each area feel distinct and kind of communicate to the players what sort of area they're in is to have multiple of the same business but in different areas operating slightly differently so for example you go to the wealthy candeliers area and where all the merchants are and a portion seller is there and they're just selling things like healing potions potions of resistance then the players go over to the slightly shadier gutterlin area where the Thieves Guild are and they find another potion store but this one's selling poisons and illicit substances things that you just couldn't get in other parts of the city and the players on a subtle level would just register that oh we're in a different kind of uh environment here and that's a really nice way to through the environment tell the story to the players and say here is what this area feels like as opposed to this other area you've got your baskets of content you've got your four or five different districts that you split your city into and you've got a rough idea of the theme and the vibe of each district in terms of uh wealth Law and Order and those kind of elements what content are you putting in these baskets how much content do you need [Music] how much content do you actually need for each district in your city not as much as you might think let's take an area a random area and a made-up City let's say it's called the Merchant's quarter and it's in the western side of a city and in the merchants quarter we're going to have a number of stores landmarks and NPCs now for the stores I'm going to list Maybe three four stores of course there are many more than that and if the players really want to find something that I've not listed they really want to find a butcher for some reason I would just say there's a butcher or a baker or whatever it is they're looking for and I can improvise that on the spot I'm only going to prepare maybe three or four key stores for that area my prep for the Merchant's quarter is going to look like a document that says Merchants quarter at the top and then has a list of stores and other things let's start with the stores so I would probably create for the merchants quarters since it's going to be Merchant focused uh maybe four or five stores and when I say create a store I'm in the Bare Bones the name of the store the name of the merchant and maybe one or two distinctive details about that store or American but really just one or two so let's say we have our Tailors and they're going to be called uh thread lightly um you know that they're Breaking Bad tread lately they're going to record thread lightly and thread lightly is run by a gnome called John lampster and so on my document I've now got thread lately probably in Brackets Tailors and then next to that John Lannister and that's already basically all the information I need but we'll go a little bit further we say we'll write down uh gnome because let's say John lampster is a gnome and uh any defining features physical features so I might just try to make this this character stand out a bit more and say that uh John lapster has uh you know a single tuft of of dyed green hair sticking out of one side of his head it looks like the rest of the hair has been kind of like burnt away perhaps at some point or shaved away or whatever it is again now we've got the name of the store name of the owner and maybe the race of the the owner and one little physical feature like this odd fat they have a tough to green hair sticking out the side of their head now I want to add one detail that's going to inform any role play related to John lampster and the detail that I'm going to add is that he's obsessed with royalty and that's all I'll write down that she's obsessed with royalty and in my head that will remind me in the night of a couple of fun ideas as I might have had swimming around my head but how to role play this character maybe all around the store he has uh images of a king um and you know commemorative plates with the king's face on it and his dream is to one day tailor for the king and all this kind of stuff now again that might not come up but it just means that when the players go in there there's gonna feel like there's been prepped on they're going to have this sense that oh this is a pre-existing store and we've walked into it but whether or not we walked into it that store already existed and that's such a great way to immerse the players but again all I have on the paper in front of me is the store the name of the store the the name of the the owner and one or two sentences potentially just one sentence describing them and and you know what they're into the fact that he's just obsessed with royalty that's all I need prepped I'm gonna do that maybe four or five times and now I have all the stores for the merchants quarter and that's probably going to be less than like 50 words on my document now the next step is obviously to write down a huge list of every possible written sold in that store an inventory of all the potential merchandise and uh and all the prices no do that that is a waste of your time and it's just too much stress instead go on Google and search for DND stores and prices or DND shops and prices you will find website after website that has done all the hard work for you you will find spreadsheets with all of the um the potential items that you could find in these stores organized by store uh all with the official prices from the the official DND books so you know that they're relatively balanced and you can just screenshot this stuff or bookmark it have it on a tablet close to hand overnight um copy and paste it or a document and print that off I have that stuff always at the ready and when the players go into a store and they they want to buy something and I don't find out what that specific store sells I just grab my document my pre-made list I got off the internet of all these items and uh you know we're ready to go another really important thing to remember is if a player goes into a shop and says what's for sale by all means mention one or two key items and you've decided that Shop sells I mean be a bit different from others but remember that it's incumbent on the players to tell you what they're looking for it's just not practical to have players come in and get a full list breakdown of everything in the store instead say what are you looking for and they'll tell you and then you respond to that once you prepare four or five stores in the very simplistic style that we've just covered you can add a couple of landmarks so these could be maybe a statue a statue of a local philanthropist or someone who's been a local hero it could be a little square with a fountain in it and perhaps an abandoned house on the edge of the district just some little elements you can add in that maybe aren't particularly uh for the players to interact with but which either tell stories reinforce themes of the area or of the city as a whole and these are just the things you'll mention when the players first arrive in the area and they're walking between stores and you're describing or as you walk by this particular Street you look down you sit as a Gallows at the end of the street now you don't actually have to keep track of where that Gallows is it's just somewhere in that basket of content you have that thing written down and ready to mention and pass them now that's the really practical stuff if you have all of that content that I've just discussed prepared for each area in your city so you've got four areas in your city four districts and in each one you have a couple of stores a couple of landmarks and maybe one little local question each one that is going to cover you that's going to feel like a really content rich and dense well-prepared City the players are going to arrive and they're going to feel that this is a living breathing space that was here before they arrived and will be here after they leave but let's Zoom back and add in a few extra elements because there's always more kind of World building we can do to make the city as a whole feel a bit more distinct so a couple of key areas to think about firstly who keeps order in this city um I like to kind of uh try to put a bit of a spin on just having the city watch you can always have a city watch or a sort of armored Guardsman walking around the streets but if you can make it a bit more interesting maybe give them an unusual name like uh the iron eyes that was the group that looked after this city behind me here and the iron eyes had a little bit of lore behind them uh they had were led by a particularly kind of thuggish uh commissioner and even though the players don't necessarily interact with them all the time it's just nice to have this kind of uh the sense that this city watch is a little bit distinct from any of the others in the other cities it's also really good to think about local festivals I love having when players arrive in a city having the city may be setting up for a particular Street Festival that commemorates some unique event or Unique Piece of lore related to the city uh you know it could be something like a battle that took place a Siege of victory that they celebrate each year it could be I mean I love things like um festivals of Lights perhaps the players arrive and there are at dusks people walk through the streets with lanterns uh maybe something that feels a bit Venetian people putting on strange masks adding these sort of things in again even if they don't play a big role in the in the plot in the larger Adventure you're trying to run they can just make the city feel a little bit more lived in a little bit more real and it goes almost any element you add at this larger level to kind of enforce the culture of the city I think is great it's also worth giving some consideration to who runs the city and how they were put in their current position of power so maybe it's a mayor and it's a mayor well are they elected and does that mean there might be an election coming up maybe there's different political factions Rivals who are trying to get in a new mirror or something like that taking a little moment to just kind of add some depth and detail to the rulership of the city again even if it doesn't interrupt the players is going to help you role play the city as a whole that stuff is good but again it's not essential the key thing is just to have these uh these districts with the content within them the overarching physical theme of the city like the location and of course the the vibe of the city we're talking about that sort of uh aesthetic of the city as a whole if you can cover all of those elements it will probably take you a couple of hours of prep I would say you could get all of that we just talked about done in two hours of prep and then on the night it's gonna feel amazing for the players and it's going to feel a lot easier for you because you're not trying to run something Giants God my cat is still yelling outside she's here this is titch I have two cats Lily and titch and uh they get very disturbed with the concept of not being allowed to go everywhere in the house all the time isn't that right um anyway if you made it this far in the video uh thank you for watching um I hope the video was useful I hope you get a chance to go over and check out the session zero Kickstarter um tips get off the table please and um thank you for watching thank you for supporting the channel and as always massive love from my patrons who make this channel possible who funded the camera and the equipment that I'm using and touches back Jesus she smells a fish okay guys have a great day I'll see you soon

Channel: Tales Arcane

Views: 17,565

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, D&D, dnd, cities, towns

Id: e0dwKvdfPiE

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023