How to Explore Cities in D&D

welcome to Banner's keep I'm Daniel this week we're going to talk about City crawls so we've already talked about dungeon crawls and I'm working on a video for Wilderness crawls or hex crawls but I wanted to take some of the knowledge we've talked about hex crawls before I think it's okay to create something a little different in the basic and expert book we have of course those two things right Dungeons and Wilderness but we all know that exploring in cities and towns is awesome so I'm going to talk a little bit about how I handle that how we can combine the two processes and why we might do it also this week we have a sponsor only crits so if you're not aware of only crits they've been around for a while now they make amazing dice they make the supplements and Adventures and if you watch my actual play Channel I use their dice a lot the the little duck ones they're like d6s with ducks inside they're pretty sweet anyways they've got a brand new Kickstarter launched today Gilman's guide to speed it's all about racing and speed and there's monsters and spells and all kinds of the cool stuff I'm gonna talk a little bit about that as we get going but let's just jump into this first so we can look at our city adventures in a couple of different ways I mean first of all there's just I don't care about that I just want to go to the town and buy some stuff and go to the tavern and get a rumor and leave but I'm talking about actually adventuring in the urban location whether you're going to build a whole campaign or you're going to just do a you know one or two adventures in the spot or just that day right so there's two ways to look at it if we look at it from the dungeon point of view imagine a tightly packed Urban environment a building stacked on top of each other in areas if the sun's not directly overhead it might even be dark during the day right laundry draped across the things smell uh people moving around this could be treated like a Dungeon Crawl right we're walking down these streets we don't we can't look around we can't identify where we are except by the buildings around us and we go down alleys and we go around corners and again we can treat the process of going through this as exploration As a Dungeon Crawl and we can combine it with the second thing I'm going to talk about in a second but let's just go a little deeper into this now one thing we're going to keep in mind here though is in a dungeon usually it's just empty right and you're kind of wandering around also you see a giant spider and you fight it in a city crawl there's always going to be people so you want to think about your people your kind of NPCs not even as NPCs in this case you want to think of them as window dressing so when you're going through a market square 90 of those people there are just just they're like having paintings on the walls or vases or you know whatever so you know a player enters a room and there's like a chest to look at and there's a tapestry on the wall that's what we're talking about here you're going to treat it just like that you come into this space and the player character is going to go over in a Market Square I'm going to look around do I see any fruit vendors and then you're gonna operate it like that right you're going to think about what's in the space what they can see there how they can interact with it and most of these NPCs unless they're somebody you really care about might just be very basic or there might be a major uh conflict or stuff to be learned it really depends on the location just like in a dungeon some rooms have treasure some rooms are empty some rooms have a monster some rooms have NPCs it's just like that and we can walk through it the same way we can even have the player characters map as they go right you just tell them listen you're going into the uh the old District here where people are often lost and people actually bring rations with them because they might get lost so you might want to keep a map and you can actually really treat it like that you know do it turn by turn they're moving slowly going through crowds what do I see okay well on the left and right you see someone appear to be apartment buildings you know over here we see a Alleyway going down with the smell uh coming from it you know who knows what you see some rats running across get some eyes light up in the thing oh over there you hear some noise oh there's a building you can go into there's a Market Square right we're treating the outside space like a dungeon so this can be really really fun and a great way to do again that really congested pact you're looking for that one person that left uh you know Society let's say a sage that knows something know too much right and they move to this like tightly packed urban place and they're hiding wasn't there an Incredible Hulk movie like that one of the ones where he was like off I think he might have been in Brazil and he was you know working in this very tight Community anyways let me know in the comments below so the other way we can do this let's jump to the other side and then we'll start talking about procedure the other way we can do this is more like a Wilderness hex crawl and in this case we treat it like a point crawl we wouldn't worry about okay this part of the city because you don't want to like you don't want to be slow and tedious because remember in HEX cross we're moving a full day per move so we want this to be okay you're going from The Tavern to the large Temple it is maybe two moves away and you're gonna okay do you know how to get there maybe do you have a map okay once you get lost you might not have to actually map the you can do it in your head but again you're going to have things you're going to interact with and a lot of that can be narrative just like a hex crawl so we're moving around the city but there's still a chance of not knowing where you're going especially if you're like my player character groups that don't ever want to tell NPCs anything so they never truly get good directions because they're always like oh you don't want to tell this NBC we're going to that Temple because they might be up to something I don't know why they're so suspicious but anyways you know this is just one way to do it and we can actually move around and use these procedures so let me walk into this in a second but first let's talk about Gilman's guide to speed foreign for fifth edition it's all about racing and speed so you've got your ground racing you've got your air racing you've also got monsters that are kind of speed Elementals and stuff like that you've got new spells new magic items do all kinds of great stuff one thing that really stands out that I think is super cool with this is the idea that you can build a vehicle so to me that is something that I I think it's not always kind of involved in all the games that I play but a lot of times it goes there people want to like build something 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process so I'm just going to go through we've talked about this before so I'm just going to kind of talk about it a little bit now I'm going to do the uh I'm going to jump into the basic book here again I'm on my iPad if you're new to the channel or you just haven't seen any of these videos I tend to use the basic expert set from 1981 often called multi basic or BX this has been cloned many many times and most recently and most successfully I think uh was ose so if you're using osc it's the same process it's just a different book I prefer to use the originals I'll put links to all of that in the show notes below okay DM roles for wandering monsters so this is now we're going into the tightly packed chord quarters right so you're gonna maybe this is even part of a larger City you go into this strange area and you're like all right the DM's like all right well you see this you know road going down there's people everywhere there there's some people trying to sell things on the corners you see a couple of vagabonds you know setting up little tents on the corner there's like a fire burning you describe how you want to describe this thing right and then the the Then You're Gonna Roll to see if there's going to be a Wandering monster now we're going to talk about that in one second because I'm going to handle this the same way for both this style and the other Style assuming that there is you know so you roll so you know if it's going to come up or not then the party moves at their full movement rate they enter places they interact they do whatever if there's no monster they move to the next step if they do encounter a monster then we go through the procedures of interacting with the monster this is exactly a dungeon girl do it the same way keep the same procedure again you don't have to be so this is how we're doing it especially if you're not using Miniatures but just in your head okay remember this is what I'm doing I'm rolling okay where are you going down this way okay you're going that way okay you're describing things you're moving through they're encountering things right now let's look at the other style the other style of course is like a Wilderness hex crawl let's look at the expert book okay so again this says order of events in one game day because one game day is a turn in HEX crawling I would probably do this one hour in a city seems reasonable if it's a decent sized city again we're going from The Tavern to the temple how long is that going to take approximately maybe one turn maybe two turns maybe three turns depending on how big the city is how congested is how direct the pads are right they say where they want to go we're going to go North to the temple wonderful We Roll to see if you get lost you're lost if they're lost we roll a random Direction they end up in and then we basically look at where they're at and we adjudicate from there now of course they can correct their course lots of things can happen if they have a map or a guide or they've been there before I wouldn't worry too much I would go about to get lost part but we're assuming here that we're exploring for the first time much like the uh Dungeon Crawl we were off wandering monsters but if you notice we roll it here at the end and the reason for that is because it's based on where you end up right if you start off in the tavern District you might have certain monsters as it would be that you could encounter if you end up in the temple District they'll be different monsters right so keeping in mind that in BX everything that's not a play of character basically is a monster including NPCs they just use the word monster for all that similar to the way that creatures often used in later editions for all humanoids basically monster is used assuming that the player characters are not lost and assuming they get to where they're going and there's not a Wandering monster you just go to the next turn so it's going to take two turns to get there you go all right well that's way over on the other side of the city it's going to take you two turns so let's roll okay you're not lost okay there's no encounter all right well you travel for about an hour and now you're over in the Market Square describe it to them give them a little a beat and then move on all right you're going to continue the temple yes we are okay roll to see if you get lost boom and you just keep moving again a procedure you don't have to really be again and I always make a point of saying this because one of the reasons why I'm doing these videos is because I think when you look at it on paper it seems like it might not be fun because it's like not in character but it is you just have to use the roles as a narrative tool right so perfect now here's the part that I think is interesting and I want to talk about a little bit more I've talked about this before but I'm going to kind of make it specific to this right now which is wandering monsters in the city or in HEX crawls when you're in a populated area so let's look at the expert book here and if we look what we've got here is depending on the the place they are so Woods River swamp there's a certain percent chance that might be an encounter and then we have various monster types so we look we see men that humans actually so you've got uh one one it's a man then two it's Undead a three it's a humanoid and then you've got men men men men so basically if you're in a city you're very likely to encounter humans right that's the most common thing you're going to encounter obviously if you go to a Dwarven City you can just replace men with dwarfs or halflings if it's a halflings in your elves you could mix it up you could use more humanoids and you could do it any way you want but what I would do is I would just keep men as whatever the predominant species race is in the city that you're in so if you're in a place where it's all half Orcs half orc is the is the thing right then you look over here and we can see for City the the uh the suitable men we've got Bandit Trader NPC party adventurers Trader blah blah goes right down the list so if we're traveling through our city let's say again we're going from The Tavern to the temple and we roll and encounter and we roll and we get men we have roll a D12 we might get fighter now fighter here as Asterix can we talk about in a second that means it's a character class so that's a leveled person that's an encounter right you can how for whatever reason you run into this fighter and now you might be thinking well random fighter who do I do whatever this is where my system comes in a little bit and let's talk about this a little bit I'm going to jump over here to my notes so I've already kind of structured this a little bit I've again I talked about this a while back I actually took this idea from a Blog to which I cannot remember where I got it so if you know where this came from this blog thing because most of these encounters are from there let me know because I would love to credit whoever it was that wrote it it was years and years of years ago I used it in my game before I was making these videos okay so you roll twice on table uh 2A in this case it's two because of the hex girl I was doing and one's on table 2B so for instance if I roll a six I've got mad men and a roll of four I've got traveling to C then I roll a 1 villagers so mad men traveling to see villagers that's what you come upon so now looking at that other table I've actually stretched this out to use the stuff from BX we roll and we roll up 5. Trader and we roll three enslaving and then we roll let's say a nine Undead okay that'd be weird but hey you know what that might that might actually be like okay we're mostly enslaving would not be okay again you can change these things to make them work for you based on the the city you're in obviously if you're in a place where enslaving would be against the law then the party can react as they would if it's even legal there the party is still going to react the way they would as you know Heroes and probably get involved and that'll be awesome and cool right so you got portraying worship and enslaving traveling to see you can change all of those right you could also change the numbers these are all of equal chance because again it's random but you could flavor one if we know there's a lot of people traveling to see stuff in the city we could add more traveling to Seas so the list that I'm using here is effectively based on the list from the the expert book but I made 12 instead of uh eight in order to kind of combine both lists right so effectively what we got here is bend it Trader NPC Basics meaning you use the basic NPC rules which I think are first or second level characters NPC expert which could be up to like sixth or seventh and then you've got uh Trader veteran uh veteran is the first level fighter basically but it's not a character class first level fighter and that's what's important so in these games a veteran is a first level fighter but it's basically a monster right if it says fighter that means it's an NPC which means it could be somebody you could recruit to be a henchman so that'd be the difference here Trader Undead Merchant I made Undead very rare because I figure this that it should be right uh Bandit and Noble and of course all these are monsters in the BX system and again uh we can roll a couple of these so let's go with make it some dice okay here we go uh 12. six and one so we've got a noble negotiating with a bandit well that's interesting what's the story there right it's not just a bandit now it's a noble negotiating with the Bandit which could be anything maybe they're being stuck up right although there is uh stealing from or actually there's not there's not a robin so you could treat that as a robbery right or you could add that to your list right let's do it on ten two six a merchant worshiping a veteran interesting so again we can interpret that many ways right worshiping typically means they're coming to a deity or something but worshiping could also just be like kissing their butt or maybe sucking up to for whatever reason and maybe that's because the veteran helped them or save them or they're trying to get the veteran to do something this starts to inspire stuff because remember when you're in cities this is really the difference right when you are in the dungeon almost everything in there is likely to be an enemy you don't have to fight everything but you're not likely going to be walking around the dungeon and hang out and have a coffee with somebody right it's going to be where here it's a dangerous area where it's oh what's happening when you're in the wilderness same thing you know you're if you see a bunch of lions they might look cute from a distance but it ain't so cute when you're up in your face right so in the wilderness everything's dangerous right but in a city it's different in a city most of these things should either be incredibly mundane that just starts to feed Adventure hooks or positive or even negative but social type encounters so when you're making these lists fill them with the right things right and if you're looking for somebody who's lost let's say you want to do something like that then I would just add them to the list so again I just took what was here you could create whatever list you like I often like my like if you look at the very top list which I think I changed the the top part but I just kept the other I can't remember again if I could find that blog I will someday find it and we'll straighten all that out but you know the top one has villagers Lord retinue Knights because again it's meant for a hex crawl Mad Men Wizards so you could add that to your uh list I'm just using the monsters to come here I don't know if I'd put dragon in the city but it depends on the city you live in right oh so I should also point out the way I said NBC expert NBC basic what I did here is I made a chart down here I just called special one approach called NPC and I've got fighter cleric dwarf elf halfling so you know if you roll NPC basic and you roll one through six it'll be let's say an elf a basic elf you'll wrote on there but then I also put parties on here as well and here I put basic and expert separately I guess I don't really need to do that because when I was building it I thought I was gonna do two charts so I will actually fix that now I hope you liked the video if so please do like it and give it a thumbs up uh subscribe to the channel ring the bell do all that good YouTube stuff I want to thank only Chris for sponsoring this video like I say I love their dice this project sounds really cool Gilman's guide to speed if you're into that kind of stuff check it out even if you're not into it check it out it looks like it's real fun I'm I'm thinking I Gotta Have Some Fun Arcane Punk airplanes in my game soon that just sounds so amazing let me know in the comments below if you want some cool Arcane Punk vehicles in your campaign also in the description you're going to find all the regular links that is to my podcast to the podcast I do with KR to my Discord server which you should join up it's really super fun over there and also to my patreon I'll talk to you soon

Channel: Bandit's Keep

Views: 31,796

Keywords: RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, sword and sorcery, Daniel Norton, old school, OSR, How to make your D&D Combat more Dynamic, dnd combat, fun combat in dnd, live to fight another day, BX D&D, OSE, old school essentials, chainmail, basic expert D&D, Phantasmal Forces (Why OSR Magic Users are powerful), Mapping is part of D&D exploration, pillars of D&D, Unique Monsters for D&D Made Easy, dungeon23, Welcome to the OSR, D&D Adventure structure, Philippe Druillet, Guillmans Guide to Speed

Id: cneBGWNoTiM

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023