This has also come up in a Discord server that I’m on lately. And I think it’s a good time to talk about how much or how little work you need to do. As a semi-seasoned Dungeon Master, I’m hoping that my experience can help get more people into running Dungeons and Dragons. But also save the effort that so many people put into it.

KISS

Keep it Simple Stupid. We’ve all seen this before, but doing something like creating a campaign can be tricky. And for a lot of gamers and people, there is an idea that you can get it “right”. This is not something that anyone can do. In fact, that is some of the charm of Dungeons and Dragons or an RPG, there isn’t a perfect way to do it. There isn’t a most ideal campaign to run that everyone is going to love. Dungeons and Dragons is a matter of taste.

With that said, don’t over prepare, don’t plan out everything. Your players will not do what you think they will. You want them to go right out of a town to a dungeon, they will go left. You want them to talk to a shop keeper for a clue, they will punch them. They shouldn’t attack an ancient black dragon at level 3, they will. In fact, you can be confident your players will do what they shouldn’t or what you least expect. So don’t over plan.

Three Things For Your First Campaign

While I could give you a lot of things to think about when it comes to a campaign. I want to make my advice follow the KISS methodology as well. So build your world small and out as you go. Know where you want to end the campaign. And only craft situations and scenarios that you need.

Start Small

This is really trap #1 when creating a campaign. I even fall into it at times. I create a whole world and think that I need to flesh out everything. But that is way more than is needed. Firstly, your players won’t go to the whole world. Secondly, you don’t need to know it all now.

In fact, let’s make it even simpler. If you want some rules for creating the world. Draw out a map, mark down 10 things on it, 5 cities, and 5 features. There is your world. Then pick one of those cities, that is where you are starting. Create 5 things of importance in it. One needs to be a tavern and one needs to be a shop. The other three are points of interest. Right down what makes those places interesting. And write down 3-4 NPC (non-player characters) the PC’s (player characters) can find there.

Then with four other points of interest on the map. Write down what makes them interesting and NPC’s who can be found there, again only 3-4. You won’t name shops, or anything like that at those other locations, you are just fleshing out a very little bit. And you have enough to start your campaign at that point.

Know The End

Well, enough world building it is. You do need one more thing. You need to know the end goal. In my Tower of the Gods campaign, that is to make it to the top of the tower. In another campaign I ran, it was to defeat a beholder. Know the end goal, it seems obvious, but a lot of campaigns don’t know the end. Or they come up with the idea of running 20 level campaign and don’t think about how to get there. But knowing the end is important so you have a goal.

Create Situations

Because that goal is what you then use to shape your campaign encounters, both social and combat. It is the lens that you filter the campaign through in such a way that everything, or most everything drives towards that end. But when creating these situations, don’t create them with a specific result in mind. Like I said, building out a dungeon that is to the left when you leave the city and the players head right, that’ll always happen. Attacking a monster they were supposed to talk to, they’ll do that, and then they’ll do the flip. Threating the King instead of making a deal with him, for sure that’ll happen.

In the end, you want the situations and scenarios you create to always move stuff forward. And you want them to feel varied and different. It might be killing the monster, but why are you killing the monster. And monsters will do different things. Social encounters you want some of them to be shaking down someone and some might be at a fancy dinner. But they should all move the story towards the end, or at least the majority should.

And you don’t plan these at the beginning. You shouldn’t need to know every session that far in advance. This is what you plan before each game. This means that you do work for a long time, but it also means that you don’t do so much work that you burn out at the start. It’s doing the work just when you need it.

What Else?

There is a whole lot more that you can do. But the point is that you don’t need to do it. I am trying to give you a simple way to getting your first campaign. Could you build out a world and create every important NPC that you players might run into. Sure, you could. But that isn’t going to be help for getting a game started. In fact, if you try and do that you will never get the game started. There will always be another NPC, another town, another scenario to think of. Instead, KISS and just do what you need, when you need it.

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The Session

Things don’t go like they hope during the night. After dealing with two parties of goblins they were hoping that it would be an uneventful rest, but they still had Fukuro Kuma, the owlbear that the goblins had previously used and who Bokken had since adopted. And the goblins wanted it back. Using the distraction of a siren the goblin boss and two goblins sneak up on the camp and try and take down Bokken. It doesn’t work, but they do manage to get Fukuo Kuma knocked out again.

The battle doesn’t go well for the goblins. Barrai, near death yet again, thunderwaves the three goblins who were creating the ruckus sending them flying through the air and to their deaths as they wonder why they had done this in the first place. Thrain casts darkness on the Goblin Boss’s armor and with only Thrain really able to see through that darkness, he just slowly Eldritch Blasts him while Bokken and the Goblin Boss swing wildly at each other in the dark and generally missing.

Once that battle is over, the rest of the night is quite restful. At the morning they continue to the ford. On the way they cross paths with a group of four gnomes who said they had camped at the ford that past night. They had seen a trunk go floating by and one of them who had been quite drunk that night and was suffering for it this morning, claimed to have heard the trunk singing something about a “pirates life”. It had continued to float down the river towards the waterfall they said.

The group rushes to the waterfall and they see the trunk, battered and broken, but still floating, not too far down the river. They surmise that it had gotten stuck on some rocks for a little bit and was now drifting further. Since there was a cliff to climb down, Bokken uses a rope to let Barrai and Thrain down while he watches Fukuro Kuma, the donkey, and the wagon.

Sure enough, they find Dorin in the trunk. He has thrown up in a corner of it from his bumpy ride, and now firmly believes that he is a feared pirate captain. But his old ship no longer meets his needs or sanitary requirements. So he gives the trunk a proper sendoff pushing it into the river, borrowing Barrai’s crossbow, and shooting a flaming rag into the side and watching it burn as it floats down the river.

They head back up the cliff with Barrai grabbing Dorin as he starts to fall while climbing the cliff. At the top Dorin knights Barrai his first mate and claims the cart as his new ship in his quest to become the terror of the seven seas. They had over to the ford and it isn’t too bad, they are making a plan when Dorin, still standing in the cart like a captain of a ship decides to send it ahead into the water with the donkey still attached to it. Bokken is able to stop it as the donkey isn’t too keen on swimming while attached to a cart. At that point in time they decide to go to the ferry. There is also a mutiny as Dorin is slapped in the manacles that Barrai has.

They make it to the ferry with no problem and get passage around 5 in the evening. It is an uneventful trip, through Dorin tries to get Barrai to do another mutiny so that he can get the ferry as his new ship to sale the seas in. Barrai instead uses words of terror and causes Dorin to become deathly afraid of krakens that might be living in the water. So much so that he’s afraid to drink his own water. That helps them get across safely. Dorin also decides that the sea has too many pirates, so he’s going to become a land pirate.

The group pushes on further until they find a spot on the road that they think is a camping spot, it turns out to be a scenic overlook. But it doesn’t have many entrances and they decide it’s probably a pretty solid spot to camp anyways. They settle in for the night and Bokken sends Fukuro Kuma off to hunt for their dinner. They bring back a deer which Dorin wants to eat the heart of because he thinks it’ll give him powers if he eats the heart of a deer that he killed, which he didn’t. Then they settle in for a peaceful night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

We were down Kip again this week. The whole siren thing at the end of last session was actually a way for me to bring Kip back in if the player could have made it. Kip previously has made the siren be attached to Bokken. So the thought had been that the players would recognize it. Instead, it worked nicely as a goblin distraction. Since I didn’t ever say it was Kip, I had the possibility to change it up.

The goblin battle was interesting. Thrain used darkness to very good affect and definitely changed the dynamic of what happened. I like a good use of a spell like that.

And a lot of the Dorin stuff was made up on the fly. I decided that I wanted to make it obvious that Dorin was in the trunk. I think had he been looking out of the trunk, those who saw him would be likely to try and rescue him. But having a drunk gnome claim to hear singing, that worked. The pirate song made sense and then I just decided to run with it. It turned out to be really goofy and now Dorin is scared of dragons, dragonborn, and kraken.

What is something weird in a campaign you’ve played in that you have just run with?

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In the lands of Demythsteria there were rumors of an ancient evil. But they’d been always just that, rumors. An ancient ruler, Empress Esmeralda De’Valiran, who ruled with an iron fist and took everything and anything that she wanted without concern who is stepped on. But that was all just a fairytale, right? Something made up to keep kids in their bed or out of trouble.

Then, one day, there was a change, Mount Kalav, where Esmeralda De’Valiran was said to have to made her throne erupted raining down fire on the land. They say that you could hear the voice across all the lands, a seductive voice, a powerful voice, a voice that brought terror and desire to everyone’s hearts. It simply said, “My children, return.”

It’s been 100 years to the day since that fateful day, and while no one knows precisely what happened that day, the lands have fallen into chaos. Peace that had been kept for centuries between nations is now an all out war. People are searching for new gods, for any form of hope that they can find. But times are bad, and lava still flows, poisoning the lands from Mount Kalav.

So, in this game, obviously, Esmeralda De’Valiran is back and the players are going to end up facing off against her. But I’d have them start smaller than that, give them a false lead or something else to focus on. I think that cults are generally a solid way to start. Cultists aren’t that strong in D&D, at least out of the Monster Manual, and you can always beef them up over time. Make it so that your high priest or priestess is much stronger and have that be a mid point of the campaign showdown, something that lets slip that the cultists while definitely bringing on another end to the world are doing this to stop what they consider even a larger threat to humanity. Put the players on the path of Esmeralda De’Valiran.

I like the idea that Esmeralda De’Valiran is an Ancient Red Dragon, the Crimson Scales, but also that the Crimson Scale was something that she used in her past life. She’d been banished away somewhere, somehow, and now the players either have to defeat her, but that is going to be difficult because the lava. The fact that she’s going to be sitting at the top of extremely dangerous terrain that will be full of little and big monsters that love fire is going to be tough enough. Add in facing and Ancient Red Dragon, that is going to be almost impossible, except, the Crimson Scale is going to be something that they can use to their advantage.

For me, there are two things you could do with the Crimson Scale. Firstly, it could be something that they could tempt her off of the mountain with if they find it. Make it a massive scale the the players are going to be able to destroy, but something immensely important to to her, create lore around it and how it works. Now the players will be fighting an Ancient Red Dragon outside of it’s lair. Or you can make it something the players can take with them to her. If they can take it to her, now it’s something that they can use in battle. It’s a powerful artifact of some sort. Something that was her downfall the first time and could be it again. If she can somehow be judged by her own scale, it means that her powers wain and fade to some extent, but it is something that needs to be kept up. So the fight will be easier, but the players will be down one PC. And make it interesting for the PC, make it a mind battle where that’s where some of Esmeralda’s power is being pulled away to, and make it her polymorphed human form that they are battling in there and a form that the player recognizes. Make it someone who they worked with to stop the cultists.

Overall, more of a standard game, but I feel like it would have some bigger and more epic moments in it. I like the idea of the final battle coming after a slog, not something that takes too long, but maybe a couple of sessions fighting up the mountain, creating cinematic moments and bleeding the players of their resources to face off against Esmeralda De’Valiran. And if you do the mind battle, really build it up, I’d pull from the mirror world stuff in Doctor Strange so that it feels real and feels physical, but make it mental.

So, as I wrap up, would you want to play in a game like this? What things interest you, what don’t? Would you run a game like this?

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I think that the criminal underworld is one of those things that is tricky to get right in a city. I find that it tends to go to one of two extremes. Either, there is little to none criminal activity in the city because you’re just supposed to shop there and not look for trouble or look beyond the surface of where you’re at, or everyone is involved in a conspiracy. Now, both have some issues, the main one being that it isn’t all that realistic. We know that organized crime and gangs exist in the real world, and they have throughout history, so why is a D&D town different? It shouldn’t be.

Let’s get back to Greenfang though, what sort of criminals are going to be there?

Outside of the town you’re definitely going to have a larger number of bandits than you would normally watching the roads because they are going to be trying to hit up caravans, or, more likely, they are going to try and deal with adventuring parties that come into town for the auctions on goods because they are going to be loaded with money and not yet have the gear that they want. Most likely there is going to be more organized group that is pretty specific on whom they hit. Then there will be a few who have split off from that group or who try and go it on their own from the start who end up having shorter careers as bandits.

The organized group of bandits, The Green Falcons, are going to know to avoid the merchant guild caravans because those are going to have better guards, and even if they don’t, the merchant guilds are going to hit back hard with their mercenaries if they lose a caravan. So, the Green Falcons are likely going to try and keep the random bandits down as well, like the merchant guilds would want, because the merchant guilds would crack down on all bandits if they lost a caravan. The Green Falcons would also have people in the city who are sending information back out to the bandit camp wherever that is located. It probably wouldn’t be someone in every guild, but there would probably be a couple around who are gathering information when a guild is going to send out mercenaries to crack down on the bandits.

Beyond that, I think Greenfang is going to be more focused on the white collar crimes. That’s what the guilds are going to crack down on but also what the cons that people are going to try and pull. You likely always have dirty money changers who are keeping some extra for themselves. The merchant guilds are probably going to consider that the cost of doing business and as long as it’s not too much, they won’t make a stink about it.

I think, also with so much money being in town you are going to find that there is gambling. I would suspect that there is some guild in town that all they do is run different fights, tournaments and stuff like that to keep people entertained, especially since it’s in the middle of no where. But that’s probably fairly tame and while someone might die, it probably doesn’t happen too often. So, most likely there is going to be something going on under the table, a secret gambling den either for fights, games or chance or possibly both. This is going to be ignored by the merchant guilds because it doesn’t take any money from their pockets, just the pockets of their employees.

So Greenfang is definitely going to have a criminal side to the town. There’s probably even a good amount of money to be made if you are careful about it, and at all points in time there is probably someone trying to get rich by scamming one of the guilds. In your game, that’s useful for your story because you can either have your adventuring party brought in to help stop it sometime. Your adventuring party, though, might be blamed for it if they have been in the town too long and because they are the “new” people. Also, a battle or two with bandits seems very likely since they aren’t probably going to be coming in with a caravan. Or it’s possible that the players are brought in to deal with some bandits as part of a larger crackdown and some extra bodies are needed. The thing with all of these story hooks is that they aren’t going to be your whole game, but a good bit of combat if you want something simpler and also a good way to get your players involved with the guilds if you need it for your story line.

Next, we’re going to talk about religion in the city as well as how the city might physically be laid out.

But the last big things about a Dungeons and Dragons town and with Greenfang is religion. Dungeons and Dragons has it baked into it’s core with Clerics and Paladins having divine magic, that means, it’s going to play an important part in any city that is built up, because people can just see this magic.

So what sort of religion is likely to have shown up in Greenfang?

You’re looking at three primary groups that would be there. While I’m sure that most dwarven and human deities would show up in a large city, especially one surrounding ore, there would be three more powerful ones for Greenfang.

First, you are going to have the temples for the god or goddess who protect people as they travel. There are several of these around the city with a larger central one by the guild halls. The merchants and mercenaries who travel stop by to drop off a coin or say a prayer at the smaller temples, but w hen a bigger group is heading out, there might be some pomp around it at the main temple. The traveler god/goddess gets worship or offerings from even those who might not believe fully in them, just out of the traditions of Greenfang. There is completely circumstantial evidence that if you give an offering that you’re more likely to have a safe trip. Even those who know that there is no connection still don’t want to risk it.

Then, the Dwarves have a strong presence simply because of the ore. That means you are getting temples to the dwarven deity for both safety in mining and also with the forge. There is a singular giant hall for this, but many come there. The dwarves have actually set-up a smaller one in the mines that only dwarves are allowed into, but for the larger groups and non-dwarves, there is the main location. Most all guilds give some sort of tithe there, even if they aren’t dwarves, again out of respect and tradition, but also because it keeps the dwarven workers happier to know that they are respecting their deity.

Finally, there are the deities of trade. Probably the second biggest after the god/goddess of travel, the deities of trade and money are also worshiped by many. While the other temples consider their role in the city to be one that is more serious as it is about the safety of the individuals who give an offering and pray there, the temples for trade and money host extravagant celebrations to keep the mood of the city good. Almost monthly there are different feasts, holidays, and festivals. They do it to show how much the deities are blessing the town as well as keeping morale up. There are temples throughout the city, and people have their preferred one to worship at. In fact, each guild will worship at a different one, just to show that their temple and their priests and priestesses are better than the others, hence so many celebrations demonstrating this fact. While the guilds might be loathe to give up money, they also want to attract the best workers, and by flouting their wealth through the temples, they are able to show their strength.

Now, there are many more deities that will show up. The master craftsmen who are making armor and weapons have deities that they have little shrines to for creativity and art. You can tell what part of the continent they come from based off of what the deity looks like. Plus there are deities for weather, crops, hunting, and other trades that are needed in the city that have popped up as well. And even deities that don’t tie into anything that’s done in Greenfang simply because they wanted to spread their word. But all of these pale in comparison to the big three. Whenever any of those three has a large event, Greenfang almost comes to a standstill as people celebrate.

We now have our economy, politics, crime, religion, and layout generally figure out. It would be easy to create a bunch of note cards with random NPC’s on them to fill out the town and to create the different wares that will be in some shops. I’m going to do that coming up here, but it won’t have to be specific to Greenfang, though it might be so I can continue building out the city.

I hope that this has been an interesting exercise. It has been interesting for me to think about as I’ve mainly built cities that are along the coast which definitely can have a different feel or cities that need to be more defensible. I hope to get Greenfang into a game soon.

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The first thing that you need to know about magic items in 5th edition, they make it so that your magic items are limited. Now, this doesn’t count things like spell scrolls, potions, or other consumable magic items, but for things like magical swords, bows, armor, etc. 5th edition has brought in a thing called attunement. When an item has the attunement keyword, it means that you have to spend some time and get attuned to it. And as a character, you can only be attuned to so many items, that total being 3 items.

There are a couple of reasons that in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition that they have attunement to limit your items. The first, the 5th edition reason, is that they have a thing called bounded accuracy. This means that you are not likely to roll higher than a certain number or lower than a certain number when rolling for an attack or a check. And if you have more items that would give you a +1 to +4 to attack, you would now be rolling outside of the normal range and apt to hit more, or they would have to adjust their armor classes, which means that it could become impossible without getting a critical hit for low level players to hit mid level monsters. The other reason is that in previous editions you’ve been able to have a lot of items, and they didn’t have the bounded accuracy, but you had to do a whole lot more math. If you had four or five items that give you a plus to attack or damage, you are having to add those up for every attack that you do, which takes the game away from being as much of a role playing game.
But let’s get back to magic items, because we know that you have a limited number of attunement slots for a party, so how do you give them interesting items and give them magical items. And how quickly should you give them magical items?

I think that how many and how quickly you give them is really up to you in the game. It is possible that they are always swamped with them because your world has a higher amount of magic, it’s also very likely that you’ll only hand out a few items because you don’t want to add that power creep.
One good way to balance this out is with the consumable items. Especially since that can help your party of all martial characters stay alive without needing a healer. Let your party be able to find items like healing potions or be able to purchase more common items like that in town. Even something like a bead of force where it’s a more powerful item, but it has a limited number of uses it will be a way to give you more magical items in the game, without bumping up the players combat stats too much.

But maybe you want to reward them with more permanent items. There are plenty of items that are more utility items that you can give them. For example, the ring of water walking is very situationally useful, and it won’t affect combat much, if at all. But now it gives you a thematic item which you create traps or puzzles around that your group wouldn’t have been able to solve before. There are a lot of items like this in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) that you can use to add more magic to your games and to give the players something more than just gold off of the monsters that they kill.

Let’s quickly, though, talk about those items that do require attunement. How do you portion out those items so that you don’t end up with someone being too strong?

When I give out +1 magical items for either offense or defense or whatever, I like to hand out several of them in rapid succession. The reason for that is that you don’t want your party to go too far out of balance. If you have a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard, and you give the fighter a +1 sword, now the fighter is going to be better in combat than either of the other characters. So I try and hand out things in a few straight sessions until every character has that attuned item that improves them in a way that they want to be improved, whether it’s combat or not.

I also make the items specific for a character. If, for example, we have that party of a fighter, rogue, and a wizard, and the fighter uses a great sword, instead of giving him a short sword and thinking that they’ll want it and that the rogue won’t take it, I would give them that great sword with a plus one on it. Give the wizard robes that provide armor or a staff that does a plus one. Give the rogue a thieves kit that is magically enchanted to give them advantage on lock picking if that’s what they want. But a magical staff, great sword, and lock picking kit are clear as to whom they are going to go to, and you don’t end up with the party fighting over magical items.
Finally, with those attuned items, how often do you give them to the party? I think that many DM’s are going to give players a couple of these items per character by around level 5-7. I tend to give them out at a slower rate than that. But it really does depend on the game that you are running. If you have a higher level of magic and magic items in your world, your player characters will probably have more.

With whatever items you are giving out though, make sure it makes sense for the monster/shopkeeper to have them. A lot of people don’t let you buy magical items in their game, and unless it’s consumable, I tend not to have them in shops in my game. But let’s talk really quickly about if a monster drops it. Something like a ring of water walking, sure, the monster isn’t going to know much about it or probably can’t use it to their advantage. But if it’s a +1 great sword that the goblin boss is going to drop, the goblin boss should be using the weapon. So plan for your party when you are going to have the drop happen and let the goblin boss use that in the fight with the players. It’s little things like that which are going to make your game feel more immersive to the players.

How do you use magic items in your game? Do you let your players pick the magic items that they want throughout the game? Do you roll randomly for what is going to be dropped? Do you use a lot of them, or only a few of them?

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Alright, the article is done, you can all go home now.

No, let’s talk a bit more about it and start to talk about where and what this city is.

Greenfang, as a name, doesn’t imply this big sprawling metropolis with a lot of rich people who want a nice and comfortable life. I would put, and I think for the city, it out into the wilderness. Probably deep in the woods on a river. The reason that there’s a city there is a little bit limited. Greenfang is probably other a hub of trade, meaning that it has several different trade routes going into and out of it, or it’s a logging community that then sends everything down the river, or both.

For my city, Greenfang was a small trading post, but things changed when ore was found in one of the nearby mountains. Now, dwarves trade ore from the mountains with humans and elves and whomever is willing to buy. While shipping the ore down the river worked to reach some of their potential customers, other peddlers and the like started creating roads through the woods, and more powerful merchant guilds from neighboring lands have hired mercenaries to watch the forest routes. The forest routes are the most dangerous, but players want the ore and the armor/weapons that the dwarves are forging.

Greenfang, since it wasn’t much of a town until there was ore, so the name hasn’t been made fancy, and it’s probably more of a rough and tumble town. And it’s probably something where the city has spread out into the forest and to both sides of the river. I think that it’s more of a sprawling city, versus something that gets built up with tall buildings. These buildings are a bit more rustic and rough looking, most of them wood buildings with a few of the larger buildings being a combination of stone and wood, but there are no pure stone buildings or any buildings that stand more than two levels in height.

You can see what the name is able to imply. I’ll dig into some of the ideas that I’ve talked about here and how they are going to continue to to shape the idea for the city in the next article. In fact, the next article is going to dig into the trade aspect to see how the city might be set-up and spread out and how a city building up because of ore will look differently than other cities.

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So, we’ve talked about this a little bit. Greenfang is a town that doesn’t have much in terms of it’s own resources. It was instead built in the wilderness close enough to the mountains to be able to handle shipping of ore, and because of that, multiple different trade routes were started to get the ore heading out more directions than just down the river. And that, then made Greenfang into a town that has a lot of trade going through it and a good hub for secondary headquarters for merchant guilds.

So the town is really full of merchants and that’s where most of the money is changing hands. But because of the proximity to the mountains and ore, you’d have a few other businesses pop up. Obviously, you are going to need inns for the merchant guild members who are coming in to get the newest shipment of goods from their guild. Plus, people who are hunting for food or growing some food, though, that is most of what is shipped and brought back into Greenfang. That, and goods that are specific or well known from the cities at the end of the trade routes.

But there is another group that would have definitely moved into the area and probably into Greenfang, and that is master crafters who forge the ore. If they can buy it before it goes through a reseller, that means that they are getting it at a better value, and then they probably sell to multiple different guilds. In fact, since this is my city, they actually hold a monthly auction for these master worked weapons and armor and other things so that the guilds bid it up and the master crafters can get the best money. In Greenfang the auction day is basically a holiday that everyone attends. A non-guild member can buy items, but most of the items are sold in bulk because the master crafters have apprentices who are turning out things in bulk like pots, etc. which are cheaper to buy when they are made in Greenfang and shipped out, than raw ore shipped out and smelted elsewhere, though that still happens.

Now that we are seeing where the money is flowing through Greenfang, we can start to see who has power. I think that there is a high council in the town that is technically supposed to be neutral, but every seat is going to be attached to a guild and is probably a guild member or related to a guild member. The high council is going to be focused on what is best for keeping the business running strong for a long time. This can lead to some contentions when a new guild tries to get established and steal out a council seat from under another guild. It also can cause troubles when a guild needs something specific, but generally the guilds ideas all align because they care about keeping their guild making money by selling goods, so the ideals don’t diverge too much.

The merchant guilds are also going to be the ones in charge of protection. While there might be an official standing guard, they are basically used to split up disputes between squabbling merchant guilds, or to run new guilds out of town before they can be established if the new guild is bugging enough of the old merchant guilds. But the protection around the city, most of that is done by the merchant guilds who have a good number of mercenary soldiers. They keep them busy keeping the roads out of the town clear so that their caravans can stay safe. This means both dealing with bandits which tend to give Greenfang a wide birth, but also wild animals that might show up. Most everyone in Greenfang can deal with something like a rabid fox or maybe even a wolf, but for larger or more monstrous creatures, the merchant guilds send in the mercenaries.

Greenfang in general is fairly rough and tumble for being as large as city as it is. But it’s also in the middle of nowhere, so the faint of heart aren’t that apt to travel to it, and they also aren’t that apt to stay. So on the criminal side, while they crack down hard on things like stealing from the merchant guilds, other things that are technically not legal in the nation are allowed here. The city guard is kept somewhat busy busting up bar fights or dealing with drunks in the street. But stealing something is cracked down on hard, so that isn’t much of an issue. It’s more apt that someone will stab another person or a slight than someone would steal something.

We’ve made it into Greenfang a little bit, and we can start to see how the city is running. We can see why a city was built up there and how it’s running. Next time we’re going to look a bit at the criminal aspect and what other groups besides the merchant guilds and master crafters might be out there.

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There are two real ways that a city can grow, you can either grow up or you can grow out. And for a fantasy game, you really do have the option for either of those. With the use of magic, you’d be able to build a city that stands higher than it should. And, for places that need to be highly defensible, you are probably going to build higher up. Greenfang, however, is in the middle of nowhere and every nation that does trade with them might want to take it over, but they are going to be concerned about retaliation from multiple fronts.

So with Greenfang, it’s a city that has spread out. There aren’t hard edges defined as people can just cut down more trees to get more room to build houses. It’s grown out further on one side of the river where the first settlement was, but as it’s grown into a city, both sides of the river have houses and there are ferries that run often to shuttle people across. Compared to most cities of the size of Greenfang, it’s a much larger foot print as in giant forest, houses can spread out more. There were houses that were built outside of the town that is now part of the city proper, sometimes to the chagrin of their original owner.

Now that we know how it grew out, is there any rhyme or reason to how it grew?

There are a few areas that are probably worth noting. Near the river on the larger side you have the town hall and it’s the primary location for most of the guilds. From there are some shops that have popped up around there as one of the market locations. But further from the river and on the other side of the river there are more market locations. There are also random shops attached to houses, though, most of the business is done in the markets. The guild artisan smiths who came to get direct access to the ore have their own area of the town. In the center of that is a large open space where they hold their auctions.

There isn’t a ton more rhyme or reason to how Greenfang is laid out. There are inns, a few random shops, temples and churches throughout the town. As new places came, they built at the edge of town, pushing other business further in. Some of the inns a little bit into the town have gone out of business because the ones at the edges for convenience, or those nicer ones by the guild halls get most of the business. A fair number of the temples are just inns that have been updated some into a place or worship as a cheaper option than building a new place, plus, it helps keep them more centralized. That can be an interesting time as some of the temples have blood on the floor where it got stained when the place was still an inn.

Towards the outskirts on the downstream side of Greenfang is the slum neighborhoods. This is where those who weren’t able to hack it in the mine live. It’s rough living conditions because they can’t afford good building supplies, but they are actually fairly well fed because of proximity to fish in the river and creatures in the woods. In the slums, having a good bow and arrow is extremely important to your survival and is the possession that you keep in the best shape. As compared to other slums in other cities, especially those with nobles, it’s actually fairly nice. Compared to others, the people there are more competent since they were able to travel all the way out to Greenfang and survive.

There’s more for how a city would be laid out, but that is the general of what you need to start to create your town. Are there any places that you think that I should have talked about? This city really was founded on a population that would be there for a bit and then leave when new guild members came in, but it’s developed over time to be a much larger and booming city that does more business than just trading of ore and other goods.

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