The Game – Sprawlopolis

Yesterday I wrote about a new game to me Grove. And Grove, Sprawlopolis, and Orchard all fall into somewhat the same category. Games with a few cards and a few components, possibly, where you are laying out the cards to complete patterns, get points. Sprawlopolis and Grove are the two most similar with all of those out of the group.

Whereas Grove is about layering the cards, you want as much overlap as possible. Sprawlopolis might encourage overlap, but might prefer adjacency to other cards depending on your scoring objective. It isn’t about building up dice faces, there are no dice, but instead it looks at scoring objectives and how to complete them.

Sprawlopolis, I think, can take longer to play as well. For one, you play with more cards, so you need to plan 15 cards versus 9 cards in the game. That isn’t that much more time, but you also pick from three cards instead of two when playing. All of these things make it a bit longer and take up a bit more space.

Upcoming Streams

On Wednesday the play is to stream more Lands of Galzyr. You can find that video here. Join me and Bumir at the table as Bumir continues on his quest to become the most famous polecat ever. What adventure awaits us this time and will we find a new status to talk about.

Then on Monday, 8:30 PM Central, it’ll be time for a new game. Well, for another game. I’ll be out of town this upcoming weekend, so I might not be able to learn a new one. But I do have other Button Shy Games, Rove and Skulls of Sedlec which I likely will have learned to get to the table as well. No guarantee I’ll play one of those, but there is a solid chance.

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Top 100 Games – 100 – 91

100 – Silver

Silver I believe has been on the list every year that I’ve made it. Last year it was on the list at #84 and now it is barely hanging out with #100. A lot of that is that I just haven’t played it recently. If I were to play it more, it might move back up.

But in Silver you are trying to get the fewest points possible in your village. The trick is that you have five cards, all face down, to make your village and you don’t know what they are. You look at two to start the game and then after that, you play down cards that allow you to look at and swap out your cards, or your opponents. Until someone calls for a vote and you see who is lowest. But that can only be done if you’ve got fewer than your five cards, which you can do if trade in two cards of the same number on a turn.

Overall a solid fun time. It’s one of the more take that sort of games on the list. You can put high number cards into your opponents village or steal cards from them. But it’s fast and offers a ton of variety, so I appreciate it a lot for that.

Buy on Miniature Market

99 – Merchants Cove

This one was much higher last year at #79. I played a lot of new games this past year, which is why we’re seeing some drop. Merchants Cove also suffers a little bit by being a really big game to table for a game I prefer to play with two players.

But the game does a ton of cool things. Each player has a mini game that they are doing, whether it’s a roll and write, spin and move, or playing with marbles. All of these mini games gives the players goods that they can then sell. And you want to sell for as much money as possible as the merchants come into the docks along the cove.

Each mini game is quite light, and how the merchants come in is about the most player interaction, quite indirect that there is in the game. But I found each mini game to be fun, and there is some strategy and puzzle for getting the merchants into the boats you want them in and getting those boats to the dock. Downside is for being light, it takes a while to play.

Buy on Final Frontier Games

98 – Quadropolis

New to the list in 2022, Quadropolis is a city building game from Days of Wonder. It’s not a heavy game but it does a lot of very interesting things. And that’s what really stands out to me about this game and got it to the list. Just how you get your buildings for your town and how you can place them in your town is really interesting.

You have tiles that you place along the edge of the board where you are getting the city buildings. It tells you how far in, the third tile for example, that you need to go and take that tile. So there is interesting strategy there. Plus, because I put down a three, now on my city board, I can only place in a row or column with a three.

Since you score points by where you put buildings, the whole placement puzzle becomes really interesting. What you do on your turn is very simple, pick up a tile and place it onto your board. But there is a good amount of thinking that goes into what tile you pick and how you get to pick it so you can place it where it’s best for you.

Buy on Amazon

97 – Small World

Dropping from #75 last year, Small World is one of the few classic games, or modern classics left on the list. Ticket to Ride, Catan and Carcassonne are all off the list now. But Small World sticks around because of the variability to it. The combos or the races and powers make the game stand out.

This is a game that I describe as Risk, but fun. Small World has you conquering areas to score points over a number of rounds. But the board is so small that conflicts will happen. And when conflicts happen, you might get wiped off the board, nearly. So instead of being out of the game or in a horrible position, you go into decline and get a new race and power combo and come in and wreck everyone.

This is something that’d be a fine game if it wasn’t, though for the races and powers. Those combos really give each game a different feel. You might be flying giants or underworld halflings or wealthy tritons. And different combos each game mean that you’ll never play the exact same game.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

96 – Hero Realms

Another new to the list game, Hero Realms is one that I got to play for the first time at Gen Con this past August. Since then, I bought it and I have played it a whole lot more. There is an app for it as well, which is great. Hero Realms is a deck building game and one that pits you head to head against your opponent trying to knock down their life.

Like most deck building games, it works with factions and those factions play off the other cards in their faction. Some factions are better at maintaining your health, others are about getting more purchase power, others are all about combat. So you can really tailor how you build, but you need to build fast.

Hero Realms is not a deck building game that takes a while to build up your purchase power. You can buy powerful cards fast, and when you hit for 10-15 damage a turn after four turns, the game is going to be over fast. So it’s very much a race to build up as fast as you can, and because of that one you can play a few times in a row.

Buy on Amazon

95 – Ascension

Another deck building game, Ascension is my introductory deck builder. It does a lot of things well, gives you fun factions and combos that play off of each other while being fairly basic. Down from #53 last year, that is again because I haven’t played it as much recently. And probably because I played the app a ton for about a year or so, and it’s a solid app.

Ascension does what you expect a deck building game to do. You buy cards, and factions cause combos to happen. But as compared to Hero Realms, you fight monsters not your opponent and that fighting, which isn’t in Dominion, I think makes the game more fun. It’s, unlike Dominion, not about ramping purchase power only. You need to fight, but it’s not only about the fighting. You get points for killing monsters but also for the cards you buy. So it’s a nice blend of scoring.

Buy on Amazon

94 – Ra

Ra is a game that is on the list and then will drop off and come back on. I recently picked it up, so hopefully that’ll mean it gets more play. But it floats around because of how interesting the auction is for the game.

In Ra you are doing set collection, basically, to score points. But how you get those tiles that you collect is through an auction. And the auction is the meat of the game. When you bid on something in the auction, you use a tile with a number, not money. So if I someone has bid a 5 and I only have a 8 to bid higher, if I want it, I bid that 8 and there is no change back. But along with losing that 8 tile I get the number, left over bidding tile, in the middle. And that might take me from a 8 to a 10, or an 8 to 1. And that can determine if you want to bid or not as well.

The game is pretty simple, I feel. But the auction mechanic definitely creates a unique feel to the game. And the auction being the main focus is a lot of fun for the game.

Late Pledge on Gamefound

93 – Similo

Similo also has dropped on the list. Honestly, most will have unless they are new on the list. Similo is a party game that offers a solid cooperative experience. At #61 last year, it has moved down because party games tend to drop over time. The more you play a party game, or at least for some of them, the more they feel the same.

Similo, though, does a solid job of being different. In this game it is cooperative where one person is giving clues to the other players. Those players are trying to eliminate the wrong answers, until it’s down to two and then players pick between those. But the twist on the game is that you might have woodland creatures and use other woodland creatures to say if your creature is similar to dissimilar. And the more rounds players don’t eliminate your choice the more they need to eliminate with the clues. So you start with one and eventually are getting rid of 4 cards out of 6.

What makes it more fun, though, is taking woodland creatures, having them as the choices and then using monsters, or historical figures, or mythological creatures to give the clues. Is a bear more or less like Zeus? Or how do you keep a mummy around with the option of some woodland creatures? The mix and match part adds a lot of variety to the game.

Buy on Cool Stuff Inc

92 – Asking for Trobils

Another one that I got to try and Gen Con and got a solid play in, hence slipping onto the list is Asking for Trobils. Clearly new to the list with trying it this year, but Asking for Trobils is going to be a worker placement game. A genre that doesn’t show up too much on my list.

In Asking for Trobils you fly around space, go to different worker placement locations, build ships, get resources and ultimately are trying to trap Trobils. The Trobils that you are dealing with give you points for scoring at the end of the game.

I really appreciate the goofy nature of the game. But to go along with that, it’s also a fast worker placement game. There aren’t that many spots to place and when you do, there isn’t that much to do with it. Each action is simple and fast and I like that to just make a game a lot of fun.

Buy on GameNerdz

91 – Parade

Finally wrapping out this part of my Top 100, we have Parade. #65 last year, Parade is another one that I should really get played again. I like a lot how it works and how it’s this light but interesting puzzle. It’s one that gives you a bit of brain burn, though.

In Parade you are playing down cards and then based off of the number you played, you can ignore some cards, and take cards of the same color or equal or lower numbers. It’s a lot to think about as you try and get as few cards from the row as possible and as few points as possible. And that is a fun twist as well for shooting for low points.

One twist that I really enjoy in the game is that if you have the most of a color, the most cards not highest total on them, each card is worth one point each. So a 5, 6, 8, and 10 instead of being 29 points is 4 points instead. It’s one that’s been harder to find, but when you can, I definitely recommend grabbing a light card game. If it’s between prints, like it is now, probably wait to grab it until it’s cheaper though.

Buy on Amazon

Upcoming Streams

Well, Wednesday it’s more Stars of Akarios. You can click the notification bell for that one here. And join me for some planetary exploration as we have a pretty new bit of story and world to explore. We’ll see if I make a poor choice or not.

And then next Monday the Top 100 2022 Edition 90 – 81 is going to be streamed on the channel. Again, click that notification bell. And the rest of the videos through the bottom half of the list are up as well. So click on the notification bells for them. Right now the only Monday I’m not sure that I’ll be streaming this is Halloween, but we’ll see, it might be a stream just slightly later in the day.

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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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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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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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When you start to build the city, first ask yourself, what is this city built around. In the case of D&D, most cities are going to spring up close to water for shipping purposes or along trade routes. That’s how most cities were founded in the real world for the large cities. You’re also going to have the smaller towns spring up along these trade routes. So, what is the primary good that’s being traded along this route? Is it going to be that there are a lot of different things coming down into a port city, so they have basically everything, or are you going to make this a city at the edge of a large forest that sends furs and wood down the river to a city along the coast with no trees?

To go along with trade, what significance does your city have in the realm that you are building. Is it a city that has a lord or lady ruling over it, but is under a king. Is it something that is near the border of two realms so it might be in a state of war more often than a city in the middle of a kingdom would be, though even in the middle, there could be land disputes around it. Or is it the seat of the king or queen of the realm and so it has that more heavily political atmosphere around it. Some of this will depend on the story you want to tell in the game, maybe you want the throne or politics to be further away from your game, if that’s the case, and you still want a city game, keep them away from the politicians and a long ways away from that.

Once you have an idea of the basics of your city, trade and political positioning,  you can move more into the finer details. You will want to consider the different aspects of the city such as crime, wealth, what sort of businesses are going to be common, what sort of education is there, what sort of power merchants have in the city, how common are temples, how much magic is there, and more. Now, that is daunting, so I tend to keep it pretty simple in my games.

Generally, I think it is good to know how much crime there is outside of thieve’s guilds or other sort of criminal organizations. A good criminal organization is going to keep other crime down so that they are able to operate more freely, and also to keep the law enforcement off of their back. An example of this would be John Marcone from the Dresden Files who keeps other gangs and criminal organizations out of Chicago. Yes, Marcone is not a good man and causes a lot of issues of his own, but he’s running a business of crime, and that is what a thieve’s guild would do in a city.

The other big one is magic, how common is magic in the city, is it only tied to the temples, or are there shops set-up on street corners that are selling potions. There are going to be some cities that have more magic in them than others because of having a wizarding school or something of the sort in them. But you can also think about this on a grander scale as well. If you’re world is fairly low magic, you might then need to consider how special it would be if in a city you had magical items. That would have to be an extremely rich city, and most likely is going to have to be the seat of power for that realm. Or it could be that magic is mainly focused on those given by the divine, so clerics and paladins are accepted, but warlocks, wizards, and sorcerers might not be.

You can see how it is a bit daunting to completely build a city, so what are some things that you can do to make it easier on yourself.

You could have, as part of session 0, a brainstorming session with the players.  Together you can come up with what sort of city it is. There are several nice things about doing this or doing my next suggestion of asking players to help describe the city in game when needed. The reasons being that it takes pressure off of you to come up with everything for the city and it gives the players more ownership over the game and the city.

If you were to go with either brainstorming in session 0 or asking in game for help building the city, I’d consider having a few surprises. If you’ve listened to Dungeons And Flagons season 2, you’ll hear me asking for things, but there are certain things, like the underground city that had been there that they stumbled into that were meant to be surprises for the players. That will keep the world and city more interesting for the players when they realize that their characters might know the city well or at least parts of it well, but there are still surprises even for their characters that they didn’t realize were happening in the background.

Another solution is to use an online resource. There are various things that will help you build your city, especially the layout of it and map it out for you that would be a lot of work otherwise. I haven’t used it much, but https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator makes a beautiful city and you can tweak it as you need. It would help you get up and running faster. There are also more detailed articles on building cities out there, but if you’re trying to lesson your work load, using something to generate the map would be very helpful.

Finally, you can just build your city as you need it on demand. Quickly figure out if this is a big city or a small city. Will your characters run into the politics of the city, and how much magic there is. Then just build it as you go, if you need a docks section of the city for a session, spend time fleshing that out. Flesh it out only as you need it and you’ll have a fully planned out city eventually. That can keep some pressure off of you at the start, but you’ll eventually have to put the effort in.

How have you built cities before for an RPG? What’s worked well for you before or do you keep them out in the country and in dungeons so that you don’t have to build a city?

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