The Fearless DM

This is continuing my campaign-out-loud series. I’ve come up with character options, a pantheon, I’m in the process of a dungeon… and just one town to start.

So most games start in the one town, and then the structure of a game will be whatever the players want to do, probably involving forays to the dungeon (which is currently 3 levels deep with a surface map).I’m borrowing advice from Philotomy.com’s “Mythic Underworld” advice.

I’ll get to the dungeon next.This is about the town.

The town needs the following things:

An Inn. Thats where the players might live between adventures. They might live elsewhere too- a cleric might live at the temple, or a player might somehow have a house. But we have to have a default residence. 

A Tavern. This is where rumors are discovered, and 1000 sorties into the dungeon are launched.  

A Temple Open to All. So I love real world mythologies and I also love massive nonsensical D&D pantheons (not everyone loves them but I do). But I am starting small, and I want a temple where anyone can get healed regardless of affiliation. In this case, I am going with a Chapel of Helias, dedicated to a local saint, the Lady of Perpetual Sunshine. You can buy cures and get curses removed, etc. Occaisionally they will have healing potions for sale.

A Place to Buy Gear. Two places, really- a blacksmith (for armor and weapons) and a general goods store for..other stuff.

A Place to Sell Stuff. Treasure won’t just be pure coin. There’s going to be a shady dealer that takes  stuff and converts it to coin, though. Also, a major source of lowbie treasure is scavenged items (armor and weaponry from enemies). This stuff gets sold back to the blacksmith as scrap.

Itinerant Magic Peddler. I just like the idea of a guy who shows up X% of the time that has a few potions or scrolls for sale.

A Mayor’s Office or some kind of town ruler guy, and his associated buildings.

A City Guard Tower, including prison, barracks, guard captain, etc.

Now, the less obvious:Each of the above paces, also has at least one, and possibly several NPCs. And each place also has some secondary jobs, some of which overlap. For example, the temple can also serve as a selling place, and the shady dealer could be a guy that gives out missions. The Temple might have a library where arcane spell research takes place.. or anything else. I think this is a good start.