Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 LilGnomeo Mar 05, 2015 22:02:40	Hey everyone, so I've been looking and I can't seem to find a thread about this already (probably because it's a dumb question) so here it goes and I apologize if it's a repeat. I'm a brand spanking new DM, like newer than most, and I am having trouble figuring out the best way to organize town movement and navigation. To clarify, this is out of combat and I don't know if this is something that is done with miniatures and hexes or rather purely through dialogue and verbal interaction from DM to player? My question stems from such backgrounds as urchin for example that grants double movement speed in cities when not in combat and or the whole idea of plotting out towns and cities on paper in the first place, if not only for a general tool to help with visualization...  I don't have a lot of opportunities to go out and experience other dungeons games and their tactics due to our location but my group of friends and I want to start playing D&D and someone had to DM am I right? To be honest it's the position I wanted. So needles to say, I am going in green and blind. I just got the starter kit and my DMG doesn't arrive for quite some time, and I need a little advice. Especially on how best to construct, navigate and incorporate towns, cities, and all the possibilities they can hopefully serve. I want the in town experiences to be more than just verbalizing " I visit the store to buy the thing from such and such, blahblahblah, moving on. I was hoping players could navigate through their towns and interact freely with all it's occupants but want to expand perhaps on their movement through it. But I don't know the streamlined way it is done traditionally.... If at all. I want to make it my own but not tedious turn based movements like combat can sometimes be. As I say this I realize it's probably not really a thing but oh we'll. Thank you to whoever can help, and I apologize for my ignorance haha.   PS the goal is to start a sandbox style campaign in a world me and my players create (mostly me but they have input through their characters of course and I want everyone to have a great experience) so although I plan to do the beginning of the mines storyline I hope to branch out rather quickly. Thanks again! -Lil Gnomeo
#2 Archon007 Mar 05, 2015 22:32:08	Blank paper and a pencil. Just draw something up and name a few buildings & NPCs. Or you can google D&D maps. You don't need every little thing. Going to a town should be part of the storyline so they should already have a reason to be there. The game should be story driven so it really that what you need to figure out.    I have a list of names on a paper so I can just select one to name a new NPC.
#3 Barky Mar 06, 2015 4:53:21	I really advise dumping the idea that you have to map out a town. There are two problems with towns & cities.     1) they are big, and that means you can spend a lot of time planning them out, time better spent doing other things. Most of it your players will never see. 2) they are repetitive. After a while, it's just a bunch of roads and buildings and left turns/right turns. That gets pretty boring.   What you really want is to keep the town interesting. So stay away from making detailed maps of towns, other than maybe one big, free-form overview map to set the tone (meager hovels or grandiose walled monstrosity). Instead, go with the events & encounters method, and navigate with "theater of the mind".     Events: create a "DMs timeline" of mostly plot-relevant events during the PCs stay. "Day 1, 6 AM, changing of the guard. 7 AM, Big Bad arrives at his office. 8 AM: Lord Victim is dragged in front of Big Bad to answer for his insolence. Noon: Lord Victim is hanged from the neck in the town square unless rescued."    Encounters: create a handful of encounters that the players can have. A pickpocket. A street brawl. The town guards, searching for the party. The party spots Big Bad's concubine in the market. A town crier, announcing the pending hanging. A doppleganger who needs to feed. If you play with minis or tokens, make combat maps for those encounters in the style of a town with benches, fountains, market booths, innocent bystanders, etc. to give it an urban feel. Some of these may be fixed, "must happen" encounters, others can be random. Steal a lot from the internet or purchased encounter books for the random ones so you don't waste a lot of your time. Remember that this is a living town: any combat will draw a crowd and a constable!   For navigation use 'theater of the mind'. Let the players just "go there", but first they have to find directions! Maybe there are flyers or posters, maybe they have to get directions, maybe they have to follow someone. Use a breadcrumb trail of clues. Maybe they got a cryptic clue on their last adventure. "Meet the one-eyed stranger at the slaughtered lamb". There will be red herrings, maybe they can get lost. Maybe the Slaughtered Lamb isn't a bar, but they're supposed to go to the actual slaughterhouse outside of town. Then they can learn about the hidden entrance to the Big Bad's prison.   That's just my take on it. I find it really cuts the prep time and let's you focus on the cool bits. Plus it's different, it's good to change things up once in a while.   Good luck!
#4 Illithidbix Mar 06, 2015 7:28:59	Likewise, unless you are in a scene like a chase where time matters, just zoom out. For the Urchin background, remember a chase isn't nessiarily one involving combat and could be useful if the players are trying to shadow a target without being noticed to see where they go.   I generally don't bother mapping out towns at all unless it becomes relevent.  If the players want to look for something and it seems reasonable that a settlement of that size has it, then they find it.   Even with a map every player will have a very different mental image of what the town looks like.
#5 abs1nth Mar 06, 2015 7:41:36	Afaik the default assumption for towns is players saying they look for a tavern for instance, you tell them if there is one or what else they can see, they go there and maybe there is an encounter along the way or you simply narrate how them getting there looks.   What I'm planning to do is create a city with different districts that the party has to navigate through by saying directions (note: not individual streets) which will lead them to different districts. They might see the spires of the cathedral to the north east or the towers of the castle at the end of the city to the north but generally they are just exploring from district to district and you decide what specific features and encounters each district could hold.   I would only use this approach for larger, interesting cities though, for smaller villages/towns I intend to stick to basically the default assumption.   I got most of these ideas from these articles: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36473/roleplaying-games/thinking-about-urbancrawls   Be warned, the DMG won't give you more info on how to handle cities during play.
#6 bawylie Mar 06, 2015 10:52:51	There is no true process to do this right.    There is only what works to serve your goals.    You mentioned a sandbox, which implies a measure of discovery. This means there must be sort of undiscovered or unknown elements.    I would start by framing the size of this town so I know how much "space" there is. Second i would put centralized or popular sites: Major temples, town square, marketplace, outlying farms, obvious geographical features (rivers, graveyards, hills).    Id draw these out and write 1-3 sentences about each. The rest of the map I would purposefully leave blank and fill in whenever I needed something next or whenever a player went out for something specific.    "Okay, does this town have a library or bard's college? We need to look up some stuff."   Point to blank spot on map, add bard's college - write 1-3 sentences about it in notes.    Only fill in what's explored and what's needed. Don't fill in what isn't used.    A map for D&D is an organizational tool as much as a navigational one. World building and game writing are hand-in-hand. Keep your goals and purposes in mind whenever you set out to create.
#7 OoftaMeg Mar 06, 2015 11:22:20	It's easy to get bogged down in too many details when setting up a campaign, whether it's a city map or a map of a country.   The general rule of thumb that I have is to put only as much information as I absolutely need to start my campaign and build as I go.  So for a city, I think of a central gathering place (often a tavern or guild hall) or two that people will frequent on a regular basis.   Who are the main PCs the people are going to interact with during the first adventure or two?  For me, this list is generally 5 or fewer.   A rough idea of the town and local geography.  Doesn't really matter if it's mapped or not ... I tend to map things out with color-coded districts for larger cities but that's just my preference.   A handful of lists that I can use during gameplay.  This is a main tool for "building" my world.  I have a list of random shops, taverns, NPCs.  There are a ton of online generators for this kind of thing.  If the PCs decide that they need to talk to an expert on purple dragons (something I had never expected) I can look at my NPC list and decide that he's been known to frequent a tavern from my random tavern list.     If I have a map, I make note of where I decide to place the tavern on the map so the PCs can go back to it at any time.
#8 Dreamstryder Mar 06, 2015 21:11:06	It might also help to introduce the PCs to the most distinctive part of the settlement first: If it is a gladitorium city, fliers advertising events could be plastered about, or the main road leads to the large structure in the distance. If it is a cathedral town or the seat of a great temple, the bells could be heard at regular hours and the minarets stand as a landmark above the roofstops. If there is a plague, the skyline could be broken up by smoke columns from the pyres and plague doctors mill about.   For a village in the sticks, one might be tempted to play down what can exist there, but avoid limiting yourself. Even a country town can have a secret society of druids that live there and meet in various places around it, or a tower stands nearby from when the area was on the borderland of an empire. Could be the village has a high population of retired monster hunters, and the main beam of the tavern is made from a dragon's spine!
#9 Archon007 Mar 07, 2015 9:56:33	bawylie wrote:
#10 RasmusNord Mar 09, 2015 14:33:28	Drawing a basic map helps me generate ideas about the town, add flavor and answer questions that are likely to come up.  Is there a city wall? A keep? Where is the city watch or sheriff headquartered? What temples are there, and why are they built on that specific site?    Is there a river or sea? What do the docks look like? What do they trade? Are there important bridges? How do people get around (foot, flying, carried, by boat?)? Is there an old ruining the isle in the middle of the river?  Furthermore having a map where you get a rough idea of distance helps you narrate and judge distance and time - eg for a chase - or how quickly they can go buy a potion. Do you need to cross the river to get to district x?