I'm overwhelmed by the idea of running RotFM with ten towns. I get that you only have to prep for one or two at a time. But you never know what will come up in conversation with NPCs, so you need to be ready to talk about anything.
Also, the towns are necessarily pretty shallow. It seems players are expected to glide between them all the time. This doesn't seem super realistic. It also seems like a lot of work for the DM, and I'm not seeing the benefit. I'm not even certain my players will be able to remember which town is which.
So why not Three Towns? Three more fleshed out towns. What would I lose if I ran it that way?
There's no reason why you can't run it using less than all TenTowns, but personally, I've found the players are able to remember which is which and it's not too much effort to prepare to run them when you take into account that people aren't hanging around outside.
With regards to realism, it's not an inaccurate portrayal of late medieval settlements, further down the line (a few hundred years if prospering, it's likely be that Targos, Easthaven, Termaliane and, Bryn Shander would grow to swallow most of the others into one/two large cities but that's out of the scope of play)
Ask your players which town they want to visit next. Then reread that section. If they go elsewhere, call a smoke break and read where they going. AND you don't have to be totally faithful to the text. If going by text was a grade I would have gotten an "D" on parts of Easthaven. You could do one sentence notes like Quest Nature page 25 CHwinga hunt. Dannika is goofy scholar type.
I don't know if you have run an wonder adventure, but In those sort of games having a ton of less developed settlements happens all the time. When the location of the place doesn't necessarily matter, it can happen in any number of the "Ten Towns". I would also argue that given the environment that Ten Towns finds itself in, they wouldn't be established like a caital city. They would function more like outpost rather then towns.
Of course, you can run the adventure however you want, but this is how I would and have run adventures like this.
Thanks for your responses. For me, Pantagruel666's kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of what I was trying to ask. Most responses here are reassurance that it's possible and it can work. But I'm really asking, why? Is there a good reason aside from lore (which doesn't matter to me) to make it 10 towns? What would you lose if you made it fewer towns?
One answer I can come up with is that fewer towns with more concentrated stuff going on in each town would lead to less need for overland travel. And I think overland's travel and the dangers of it are a big part of this adventure.
The only other thing I can think of is, if I made it fewer towns then I wouldn't be putting more work on myself to make that work. It's written as 10 towns so it's easiest to run it as 10 towns.
Thanks for your responses. For me, Pantagruel666's kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of what I was trying to ask. Most responses here are reassurance that it's possible and it can work. But I'm really asking, why? Is there a good reason aside from lore (which doesn't matter to me) to make it 10 towns? What would you lose if you made it fewer towns?
One answer I can come up with is that fewer towns with more concentrated stuff going on in each town would lead to less need for overland travel. And I think overland's travel and the dangers of it are a big part of this adventure.
The only other thing I can think of is, if I made it fewer towns then I wouldn't be putting more work on myself to make that work. It's written as 10 towns so it's easiest to run it as 10 towns.
True overland travel start coming into effect during Chapter 2.
If you talking about running the whole book, in later chapters all of the Ten-towns can be attacked by various forces. In fact I keep a running total of deaths and increases after each session. Currently after 10 sessions the population for each town is Bryn Shander 1187. Bremen 128. Caer-Dineval 89. Caer-Konig 140. Dougan’s Hole 29. Easthaven 694. Good Mead 76. Lonely Wood 90. Targos 975. Termalaine 614.
Now Termalaine is increasing due to various Icewind Kobolds are becoming miners due to the players actions. Easthaven is losing people because the players let a ghost escape and she is drowning people nightly. Dougan's hole is decreasing due an escape zoo animal. But most of the Chapter 1 quests can be moved around a bit.
For me having all 10 has helped set the current mood of Icewind Dale. All of these towns used to be populated and flourishing. Then the Big Cold came, and now they've all dwindled down to a shadow of their former selves. In fact, a player asked me why the residents of Bremen don't just move to Targos, since it's bigger. My answer may not have been lore-accurate, but I made it clear that this wasn't a massive cataclysm that wiped out a huge chunk of the population. It was gradual, over the last two years. Some people left on the last caravan out of Icewind Dale, some tried exploring to find a way to stop it and haven't come back. Some monsters have gotten more bold, resulting in even more casualties than normal. The people that are left are a mixture of those too stubborn to leave, or just feeling too hopeless to try and pack up and move elsewhere. Some have kids who wouldn't be able to make the journey necessarily. Seeing 10 different settlements brought this low really made it clear how dangerous it is in Icewind Dale for my players, and I'm not sure that having 3 or 4 larger, more developed towns would have had that same effect.
For the purposes of RotFM, I'd say you need ten towns to do Chapter 4 properly, forcing the characters to really contemplate how much space they need to cover how quickly. If you really hate 7 of the towns, you have a great chance to get rid of a few right there.
What I doing with Ten Towns is at the end of each month, roll a d10. The population decreases due people leaving for sunnier climates, or just walking out of the house with out their clothes on. So I took inspiration from Chapter 4 and started in Chapter 1.
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I'm overwhelmed by the idea of running RotFM with ten towns. I get that you only have to prep for one or two at a time. But you never know what will come up in conversation with NPCs, so you need to be ready to talk about anything.
Also, the towns are necessarily pretty shallow. It seems players are expected to glide between them all the time. This doesn't seem super realistic. It also seems like a lot of work for the DM, and I'm not seeing the benefit. I'm not even certain my players will be able to remember which town is which.
So why not Three Towns? Three more fleshed out towns. What would I lose if I ran it that way?
It's Ten Towns because that's what it is in lore that greatly predates this adventure, not because the adventure needs ten towns.
There's no reason why you can't run it using less than all TenTowns, but personally, I've found the players are able to remember which is which and it's not too much effort to prepare to run them when you take into account that people aren't hanging around outside.
With regards to realism, it's not an inaccurate portrayal of late medieval settlements, further down the line (a few hundred years if prospering, it's likely be that Targos, Easthaven, Termaliane and, Bryn Shander would grow to swallow most of the others into one/two large cities but that's out of the scope of play)
Ask your players which town they want to visit next. Then reread that section. If they go elsewhere, call a smoke break and read where they going. AND you don't have to be totally faithful to the text. If going by text was a grade I would have gotten an "D" on parts of Easthaven. You could do one sentence notes like Quest Nature page 25 CHwinga hunt. Dannika is goofy scholar type.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
I don't know if you have run an wonder adventure, but In those sort of games having a ton of less developed settlements happens all the time. When the location of the place doesn't necessarily matter, it can happen in any number of the "Ten Towns". I would also argue that given the environment that Ten Towns finds itself in, they wouldn't be established like a caital city. They would function more like outpost rather then towns.
Of course, you can run the adventure however you want, but this is how I would and have run adventures like this.
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Thanks for your responses. For me, Pantagruel666's kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of what I was trying to ask. Most responses here are reassurance that it's possible and it can work. But I'm really asking, why? Is there a good reason aside from lore (which doesn't matter to me) to make it 10 towns? What would you lose if you made it fewer towns?
One answer I can come up with is that fewer towns with more concentrated stuff going on in each town would lead to less need for overland travel. And I think overland's travel and the dangers of it are a big part of this adventure.
The only other thing I can think of is, if I made it fewer towns then I wouldn't be putting more work on myself to make that work. It's written as 10 towns so it's easiest to run it as 10 towns.
True overland travel start coming into effect during Chapter 2.
If you talking about running the whole book, in later chapters all of the Ten-towns can be attacked by various forces. In fact I keep a running total of deaths and increases after each session. Currently after 10 sessions the population for each town is Bryn Shander 1187. Bremen 128. Caer-Dineval 89. Caer-Konig 140. Dougan’s Hole 29. Easthaven 694. Good Mead 76. Lonely Wood 90. Targos 975. Termalaine 614.
Now Termalaine is increasing due to various Icewind Kobolds are becoming miners due to the players actions. Easthaven is losing people because the players let a ghost escape and she is drowning people nightly. Dougan's hole is decreasing due an escape zoo animal. But most of the Chapter 1 quests can be moved around a bit.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
For me having all 10 has helped set the current mood of Icewind Dale. All of these towns used to be populated and flourishing. Then the Big Cold came, and now they've all dwindled down to a shadow of their former selves. In fact, a player asked me why the residents of Bremen don't just move to Targos, since it's bigger. My answer may not have been lore-accurate, but I made it clear that this wasn't a massive cataclysm that wiped out a huge chunk of the population. It was gradual, over the last two years. Some people left on the last caravan out of Icewind Dale, some tried exploring to find a way to stop it and haven't come back. Some monsters have gotten more bold, resulting in even more casualties than normal. The people that are left are a mixture of those too stubborn to leave, or just feeling too hopeless to try and pack up and move elsewhere. Some have kids who wouldn't be able to make the journey necessarily. Seeing 10 different settlements brought this low really made it clear how dangerous it is in Icewind Dale for my players, and I'm not sure that having 3 or 4 larger, more developed towns would have had that same effect.
For the purposes of RotFM, I'd say you need ten towns to do Chapter 4 properly, forcing the characters to really contemplate how much space they need to cover how quickly. If you really hate 7 of the towns, you have a great chance to get rid of a few right there.
What I doing with Ten Towns is at the end of each month, roll a d10. The population decreases due people leaving for sunnier climates, or just walking out of the house with out their clothes on. So I took inspiration from Chapter 4 and started in Chapter 1.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.