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Do you like playing in towns?
- Thread starter towngen
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BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
Only if the GM has the town planned out in advance.
The DMG did a lot to help people populate towns, but really a list of what population size is required to support a given buisness would have been nice. It is hard to do that kind of thing on the fly.
The DMG did a lot to help people populate towns, but really a list of what population size is required to support a given buisness would have been nice. It is hard to do that kind of thing on the fly.
Olive
Explorer
BiggusGeekus said:
check this out...
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm
also, i like towns, but given that our party is entirely dodgy elves and half elves, we get hassled a lot in towns, which gets a bit frustrating...
Sir Osis of Liver
Explorer
I've always enjoyed towns, as a DM and player both, a lot of times when charaters are in a town you can get off a lot of free form role play. It's great as a DM to just let the players loose on a town and simple sit back and react to what ever crazy stuff they come up with to keep themselves occupied.
As a player they're fun because you can usally get in a fair amount of "me time" and do all those little personnal things you want to get dun for your character.
As a player they're fun because you can usally get in a fair amount of "me time" and do all those little personnal things you want to get dun for your character.
Eosin the Red
First Post
POST A LINK
Not many folks (me included) visit every forum on the board. If you want comments and you are in a tiny forum post a link to it on the general board.
Like so http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2433
Not many folks (me included) visit every forum on the board. If you want comments and you are in a tiny forum post a link to it on the general board.
Like so http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2433
Hard8Staff
First Post
Until last year, I never liked playing in towns. It was too hard to get all the detail conveyed to the players.
All that changed when I gamed with the brilliant John O'Neill (owner of blackgate.com). He ran us through a campaign in ancient greece where we spent forever in Thebes. He had a special encounter system which we I immediately started trying to figure out how to publish. Now it appears in Ed Greenwood's Geanavue (RumorQuest™ encounter system).
The way it works is you create scores of rumors and encounters. (If you're having trouble, just make 12 or so). You prepare them for play by placing each on a small strip of paper (just print 'em and cut 'em out). Then place in a hat on the table for random drawing. The catch is that they are somewhat related and they're not rumors like "The princess is missing." They're more like a couple hundred words in the form of snippets of conversation between a couple of people (like merchants in a bazaar, for example).
I feel like I'm rambling now, so i'll stop, but anyway, it's VERY kewl and can be done at home, but it's time consuming and takes some talent. It sure makes a city come alive, though. John turned 3 hard-core "we really don't much like towns" into "yeah! MORE! MORE!"
Dave
All that changed when I gamed with the brilliant John O'Neill (owner of blackgate.com). He ran us through a campaign in ancient greece where we spent forever in Thebes. He had a special encounter system which we I immediately started trying to figure out how to publish. Now it appears in Ed Greenwood's Geanavue (RumorQuest™ encounter system).
The way it works is you create scores of rumors and encounters. (If you're having trouble, just make 12 or so). You prepare them for play by placing each on a small strip of paper (just print 'em and cut 'em out). Then place in a hat on the table for random drawing. The catch is that they are somewhat related and they're not rumors like "The princess is missing." They're more like a couple hundred words in the form of snippets of conversation between a couple of people (like merchants in a bazaar, for example).
I feel like I'm rambling now, so i'll stop, but anyway, it's VERY kewl and can be done at home, but it's time consuming and takes some talent. It sure makes a city come alive, though. John turned 3 hard-core "we really don't much like towns" into "yeah! MORE! MORE!"
Dave
omedon
First Post
You bet I do.
I wish we could play in them more but my DM's campaign seems to revlove more around the wilderness. In our last campaign I rolled up a bard. Unfortuneately the adventure started us off shipwrecked and stranded on a jungle Island. I wished I hadn't spent all my skills on gather information, diplomacy, innuendo, etc.
Oh well.
Towns are fun, cities are even funner.
I wish we could play in them more but my DM's campaign seems to revlove more around the wilderness. In our last campaign I rolled up a bard. Unfortuneately the adventure started us off shipwrecked and stranded on a jungle Island. I wished I hadn't spent all my skills on gather information, diplomacy, innuendo, etc.
Oh well.
Towns are fun, cities are even funner.
Thanks so much for all the responses!
The link Olive sent is really nice too, you guys ought to check that out if you haven't already.
When I didn't get any reponses to my original post, I figured it would be for 1 of 4 reasons:
1) The GUI I posted sucked so bad it wasn't worth a comment.
2) The GUI I posted was so great it didn't need a comment.
3) I don't like playing in towns so I never looked at it and I don't care.
4) I'm too lazy/apathetic to actually look at something and comment and/or I just lurk on these boards and never post anything.
I didn't think 1 or 2 was very likely.
And it's kinda hard to ask people if 4 is true, because if it is, you won't get any answers.
So I though ... 3 I could test with this poll.
Of course, I didn't think of answer 5, people don't visit the software forum and never saw it.
So it looks like a combination of 4 and 5.
Also, I don't know if I made it clear in the readme, but I'm only going to charge very much for this if I can make the generator what I have envisioned in my head (which would take half a book to write down). If it turns out I can't devote the time/energy to this to make it "the end all/be all" of town generators, then obviously it's not reasonable to charge (~$30) for a piece of crap.
So anyway, most of my free time for the last month or so was devoted to writing this GUI. I'm not sure how long it's gonna take to make it spit out a town, but I'll try to keep people posted.
I've DM'ed enough towns now over the years to have a bunch of nifty (to me anyway) ideas to help things along. I really want to capture the FEEL of a real town, so that when you are DMing a town and are mentally exhausted from work and don't feel creative, you can still give your players something fun to play in.
Stuff like:
certain items cost more or less because of a real economic/political reason, not just because of a diplomacy check vs. an arbitrary DC to modify the price from the PHB.
Whe they ask "Ok. we look around the room. Who's in the tavern?", the DM can give a list of ACTUAL inhabitants that actually have lives, and places they work, and places they live, etc...
The program as I envision it won't actually make a map of the town, just a list of every building/area and a reasonably full description of it's occupants, what it looks like, etc... Plus, several charts of stats for people, which people go to which tavern, who are that persons friends & enemies, etc...
Well, time will tell whether I'm just full of hot air, or if I can actually pull this off.......
The link Olive sent is really nice too, you guys ought to check that out if you haven't already.
When I didn't get any reponses to my original post, I figured it would be for 1 of 4 reasons:
1) The GUI I posted sucked so bad it wasn't worth a comment.
2) The GUI I posted was so great it didn't need a comment.
3) I don't like playing in towns so I never looked at it and I don't care.
4) I'm too lazy/apathetic to actually look at something and comment and/or I just lurk on these boards and never post anything.
I didn't think 1 or 2 was very likely.
And it's kinda hard to ask people if 4 is true, because if it is, you won't get any answers.
So I though ... 3 I could test with this poll.
Of course, I didn't think of answer 5, people don't visit the software forum and never saw it.
So it looks like a combination of 4 and 5.
Also, I don't know if I made it clear in the readme, but I'm only going to charge very much for this if I can make the generator what I have envisioned in my head (which would take half a book to write down). If it turns out I can't devote the time/energy to this to make it "the end all/be all" of town generators, then obviously it's not reasonable to charge (~$30) for a piece of crap.
So anyway, most of my free time for the last month or so was devoted to writing this GUI. I'm not sure how long it's gonna take to make it spit out a town, but I'll try to keep people posted.
I've DM'ed enough towns now over the years to have a bunch of nifty (to me anyway) ideas to help things along. I really want to capture the FEEL of a real town, so that when you are DMing a town and are mentally exhausted from work and don't feel creative, you can still give your players something fun to play in.
Stuff like:
certain items cost more or less because of a real economic/political reason, not just because of a diplomacy check vs. an arbitrary DC to modify the price from the PHB.
Whe they ask "Ok. we look around the room. Who's in the tavern?", the DM can give a list of ACTUAL inhabitants that actually have lives, and places they work, and places they live, etc...
The program as I envision it won't actually make a map of the town, just a list of every building/area and a reasonably full description of it's occupants, what it looks like, etc... Plus, several charts of stats for people, which people go to which tavern, who are that persons friends & enemies, etc...
Well, time will tell whether I'm just full of hot air, or if I can actually pull this off.......
Last edited:
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