I'm making a campaign for my players, and I want to it quite detailed so I can be prepared for most situations without having to improvise. What I'm here to ask for is just some basic design tips when it comes to making a city or town. If someone could perhaps give me a list, or some pointers of things to include when making them like road names, temples, taverns, inns, brothels, and other things like that. I just want a good resource to look through while I make my cities.
Also, if anyone has any tips or ideas for organizations to include kind of like the Cobalt Soul and the various larger organizations in Critical Role.
That's not what I meant, though. I was asking what's important for to include in cities, mainly wondering about key organizations that any city needs to operate.
A city should include a temple or two, and if there is more than one, then they might be rival gods. A good thing to do is split the city into districts, such as a religious district, military district, noble district, middle-class district, and the slums. The slums should have it's own hierarchy of bandits and thieves, which are as much in control as the city's government in that area. Military and noble districts wont have taverns or inns, but the other areas should have a couple of them each. Also write down some NPCs and their occupation, if it seems important (Nobles, Head Thief, Constable, Sage, Merchants, etc.). I hope this helps.
I can share some of the stuff I use for my own homebrew world. I start by asking myself some questions.
How big is it? The size of the settlement as well as how many people are in the area matter for me. In general, I count all people living within two hours (walking time) from the settlement as part of the settlement's population. Outside of major cities, mine range from a few dozen folks up to 30,000 people.
What's the place made of? The building material, is it wood, stone, brick, cobb, and so on. This comes from a simple rule, what is available locally? For example, in my world, the Cold Plains have few trees, so many smaller settlements have a high percentage of cobb housing and the wood, being expensive in the area, is used in community buildings and by the wealthly.
What's the distribution of businesses? I have a table for that and it's big so rather than post it here I'll just link my pdf (The Middle Lands of Keltor). The table, page 31, has each business type listed and the number of them/10,000 people in a typical settlement. While this one is modified for my needs, such tables are floating around the Internet. I also use the number only as a guide, some cities will have more than the listed amount because they export the extra. Some have less because they lack the ability to make that thing and import what they need (or do without it). All these details are important for fleshing out a city.
Are there fortifications? If so, what kind? No walls, a low charge-breaking wall, a wooden palisade, a simple stone wall, a cut-stone wall, a moat, a fort, a keep, a castle, are just some of the options.
The power structure is something you need to think about. Again, that pdf has lots of the stuff I use over and over for my games. In general, the ruler(s), other nobles, the guard, trade guilds, service guilds, powerful merchants, religious leaders, and so on.
Is there a special trade? My feeling is that all cities that exist, exist out of some necessity. All of them will have trade to some degree. So, common goods moving about. Some places have uncommon or rare goods also. Just what that is will depend on the world you are making. In mine, gold, gems, spices, silk, glasswork, and apothecaries are some of the things that count as special. Such things grant extra trade opportunities to the settlement.
Look over that pdf, it will give you an example of what you can do. There are even some example settlements (page 62) that may be of use.
Whenever I'm setting up a city, my first question is always: Why did they build a city here? What made this place either a good enough resource for a city, or important enough for a city? From there, it's easy to build up. This town was made because of the incredibly fertile ground, so it became a farming community that, while small, is able to produce large amounts of quality crops that they trade to other local towns and villages.
From there, I decided that the ground was specially fertile because it was Druid territory, and the founder made a deal with the Archdruid at the time for a certain amount of land. This tied to a current sidequest where the Druids were attacking the town as they began to expand beyond the agreed upon bounds, as the short-lived humans didn't have record of the deal.
So now I knew I wanted there to be Druidic 'landmarks' of some kind in or near the town, and the town was a small, expanding farm community. Everything from there filled in-- What else do they need? What else is important to them? And you fill in from there.
For bigger cities, I do a similar thing... Why is this here? But there's a second part to this.
So, one: Why is this here? Well, one was a coastal city positioned well for sea trade routes. Great, so they are a city of trade-- They need a bustling market to represent that, and they need 'weird' interesting landmarks of the different foreign people who have come to make it their home. Each tavern should be unique to a different culture -- and that's part of what makes this place special. Big cities attract more interesting flavour, so they get magic shops, and large criminal networks. This town in particular had some famed artists who built statuary and trimmed hedges, so there were guilds of sculptors.
You don't need a giant place with every detail filled in, you just need highlighted points. For this large city I had districts which had a vague enough, but solid enough history that it was easy to build on, and there were enough highlights that I didn't have to improvise on the spot. There were things to take their attention, and if they wanted something I hadn't prepared for, I would have space in between sessions to further develop whatever the party had grown interested in.
For this city there were 7 districts, which I decided to name somewhat nautically for theme after I determined their general intent. The Anchorflats were the farmlands to the east of the city; the Bulwark was the well-secured city gates that used to be where the old prison was in the originally established town (part of original city/older), the Bilge which was the original area of town which became rundown and shifted lower land; Cofferdams where the market is protected by an intricate weighted damming system; Galleyhill where the middle class live and have homeowner yard contests; Flagship Cliffs where the magistrate's building is located, the lighthouse stands, and the wealthy have their homes looking out to the ocean; and the Fathoms where the docks and fish markets are.
The second part is the key of being a DM, in my opinion: Listening. I know my players, so I had an idea of what they would find interesting: Inns/taverns, magic shop, potion shop, hunter's guild, thieves' guild, a monastery, a book shop, and a beach. So that's what I designed originally, and I listened as they went through to these things and picked up on what else they were interested in; and I threw in small city encounters and paid attention to which of them once again made them interested to know what to develop.
I went from having a 2 page summary of the place, to now having a document at around 50 pages. You don't need to know every detail to avoid improvising. Know your players, listen to them when they mention what they want/like. If they have a character that likes weapons, make sure you give them a cool weapons shop with an interesting NPC. If they a connoisseur of brews, make some cool taverns with unique 'signature drinks'. Look into your player characters' backgrounds and pick out things they have been built to care about, and include those. Your city will seem lively just because the players care about what's alive in it.
I'm making a campaign for my players, and I want to it quite detailed so I can be prepared for most situations without having to improvise. What I'm here to ask for is just some basic design tips when it comes to making a city or town. If someone could perhaps give me a list, or some pointers of things to include when making them like road names, temples, taverns, inns, brothels, and other things like that. I just want a good resource to look through while I make my cities.
Also, if anyone has any tips or ideas for organizations to include kind of like the Cobalt Soul and the various larger organizations in Critical Role.
Mostly I just use a random map pulled from Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, or one of the other adventures. Then just rename a few key things.
That's not what I meant, though. I was asking what's important for to include in cities, mainly wondering about key organizations that any city needs to operate.
A city should include a temple or two, and if there is more than one, then they might be rival gods. A good thing to do is split the city into districts, such as a religious district, military district, noble district, middle-class district, and the slums. The slums should have it's own hierarchy of bandits and thieves, which are as much in control as the city's government in that area. Military and noble districts wont have taverns or inns, but the other areas should have a couple of them each. Also write down some NPCs and their occupation, if it seems important (Nobles, Head Thief, Constable, Sage, Merchants, etc.). I hope this helps.
I can share some of the stuff I use for my own homebrew world. I start by asking myself some questions.
How big is it? The size of the settlement as well as how many people are in the area matter for me. In general, I count all people living within two hours (walking time) from the settlement as part of the settlement's population. Outside of major cities, mine range from a few dozen folks up to 30,000 people.
What's the place made of? The building material, is it wood, stone, brick, cobb, and so on. This comes from a simple rule, what is available locally? For example, in my world, the Cold Plains have few trees, so many smaller settlements have a high percentage of cobb housing and the wood, being expensive in the area, is used in community buildings and by the wealthly.
What's the distribution of businesses? I have a table for that and it's big so rather than post it here I'll just link my pdf (The Middle Lands of Keltor). The table, page 31, has each business type listed and the number of them/10,000 people in a typical settlement. While this one is modified for my needs, such tables are floating around the Internet. I also use the number only as a guide, some cities will have more than the listed amount because they export the extra. Some have less because they lack the ability to make that thing and import what they need (or do without it). All these details are important for fleshing out a city.
Are there fortifications? If so, what kind? No walls, a low charge-breaking wall, a wooden palisade, a simple stone wall, a cut-stone wall, a moat, a fort, a keep, a castle, are just some of the options.
The power structure is something you need to think about. Again, that pdf has lots of the stuff I use over and over for my games. In general, the ruler(s), other nobles, the guard, trade guilds, service guilds, powerful merchants, religious leaders, and so on.
Is there a special trade? My feeling is that all cities that exist, exist out of some necessity. All of them will have trade to some degree. So, common goods moving about. Some places have uncommon or rare goods also. Just what that is will depend on the world you are making. In mine, gold, gems, spices, silk, glasswork, and apothecaries are some of the things that count as special. Such things grant extra trade opportunities to the settlement.
Look over that pdf, it will give you an example of what you can do. There are even some example settlements (page 62) that may be of use.
DM Tip #42: If they split up, giggle insanely!!
Past and Current Homebrew RPG Projects
Make it a union\guild run town . That leads to plenty of opportunities for conflict!!
Whenever I'm setting up a city, my first question is always: Why did they build a city here? What made this place either a good enough resource for a city, or important enough for a city? From there, it's easy to build up. This town was made because of the incredibly fertile ground, so it became a farming community that, while small, is able to produce large amounts of quality crops that they trade to other local towns and villages.
From there, I decided that the ground was specially fertile because it was Druid territory, and the founder made a deal with the Archdruid at the time for a certain amount of land. This tied to a current sidequest where the Druids were attacking the town as they began to expand beyond the agreed upon bounds, as the short-lived humans didn't have record of the deal.
So now I knew I wanted there to be Druidic 'landmarks' of some kind in or near the town, and the town was a small, expanding farm community. Everything from there filled in-- What else do they need? What else is important to them? And you fill in from there.
For bigger cities, I do a similar thing... Why is this here? But there's a second part to this.
So, one: Why is this here? Well, one was a coastal city positioned well for sea trade routes. Great, so they are a city of trade-- They need a bustling market to represent that, and they need 'weird' interesting landmarks of the different foreign people who have come to make it their home. Each tavern should be unique to a different culture -- and that's part of what makes this place special. Big cities attract more interesting flavour, so they get magic shops, and large criminal networks. This town in particular had some famed artists who built statuary and trimmed hedges, so there were guilds of sculptors.
You don't need a giant place with every detail filled in, you just need highlighted points. For this large city I had districts which had a vague enough, but solid enough history that it was easy to build on, and there were enough highlights that I didn't have to improvise on the spot. There were things to take their attention, and if they wanted something I hadn't prepared for, I would have space in between sessions to further develop whatever the party had grown interested in.
For this city there were 7 districts, which I decided to name somewhat nautically for theme after I determined their general intent. The Anchorflats were the farmlands to the east of the city; the Bulwark was the well-secured city gates that used to be where the old prison was in the originally established town (part of original city/older), the Bilge which was the original area of town which became rundown and shifted lower land; Cofferdams where the market is protected by an intricate weighted damming system; Galleyhill where the middle class live and have homeowner yard contests; Flagship Cliffs where the magistrate's building is located, the lighthouse stands, and the wealthy have their homes looking out to the ocean; and the Fathoms where the docks and fish markets are.
The second part is the key of being a DM, in my opinion: Listening. I know my players, so I had an idea of what they would find interesting: Inns/taverns, magic shop, potion shop, hunter's guild, thieves' guild, a monastery, a book shop, and a beach. So that's what I designed originally, and I listened as they went through to these things and picked up on what else they were interested in; and I threw in small city encounters and paid attention to which of them once again made them interested to know what to develop.
I went from having a 2 page summary of the place, to now having a document at around 50 pages. You don't need to know every detail to avoid improvising. Know your players, listen to them when they mention what they want/like. If they have a character that likes weapons, make sure you give them a cool weapons shop with an interesting NPC. If they a connoisseur of brews, make some cool taverns with unique 'signature drinks'. Look into your player characters' backgrounds and pick out things they have been built to care about, and include those. Your city will seem lively just because the players care about what's alive in it.
I like to start my towns from a basic generation done by this website: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator