Help me make a small town with a bit of Planescape feel

[RangerWickett]

I plan to start a new campaign in a month or so. The party will start out all as members of the same town, having grown up together. Indeed, the first session will involve them roleplaying their youth, interacting with townsfolk, picking their abilities, classes, feats, and skills, and forming a bond to the setting.

My plan is that the players should feel invested in the setting, so I need a nice, fleshed-out town, with lots of interesting characters the party can interact with.

The basic world setting is an odd one, though. The world is only a few thousand years old, a blink in the cosmic scheme of things. There are a lot of portals to other planes, and the whole world is slightly in flux, still going through its growing pains, sort of the same way the PCs will be at first.

So there isn't a huge established network of countries or trade. The town should be fairly self-sufficient, though it has occasional contact with the outside world. Tech level should be vaguely Bronze Age, and no one should have more than 5 class levels. On the other hand, because of the ease of traveling to other planes, all manner of creatures could be inhabitants of the city, even if they have a high ECL.

I want to go for a feel somewhat akin to the 2nd edition Planescape, where there were all manner of powerful entities, and the world was vast, but extreme conflict was rare, and every place had an air of mystery.

Care to help me with ideas for the town? We can all collaborate on some ideas. Unsurprisingly, I haven't fully formed a vision of what the campaign will be yet, so I'm open to inspiration.

Ideas I've Had
Some of the PCs actually have parents, some were simply found and taken in as children of the town.

I want a character, Uncle Artep, who is sort of the town 'old coot.' He's fascinated with travel, exploration, and maps, and hopefully he'll incite in the party an interest in adventuring and exploring. Artep will be a bit of a jack of all trades, like a bard, except that he tells stories instead of sings.

I want there to be places near the town that would be interesting sites for adventures for 1st level characters. I also need people who can expose the characters to different skill sets as they're growing up, like hunters, brawlers, blacksmiths, mages, and so on.

I would like some ideas for 'mini-games' to run the PCs through to show them growing up.

I have no idea what religion would be like in this setting, but the phrase that keeps tumbling through my head is out of Genesis. "There were giants in the earth in those days." The world has not yet settled down, so mighty creatures still roam the world, threats to the dominance of humanity that might need to be destroyed or allied with.

I'm toying with the idea that there is no night. It's always bright, because the world floats in a primordial starscape that glows constantly, something like a nebula. I kinda want the party to be the ones who have to construct the planar cosmology of the world -- there's no sun because there is no 'plane of fire' that is linked to this world's material plane, and so on.


Adventure: The first major adventure idea I have is that a strange traveler comes to the town, asking for help to get at some ore nearby the town. The PCs' town doesn't really have a monetary system, so they go out of curiosity or in exchange for a favor. They fight some critters, help this guy get gold/adamantine/whatever, and then travel with him through a portal to some Planescape locale (probably not Sigil, since I'd like to save that for later).

They accompany the guy as he tries to trade the ore for magic items, only to discover that no merchant will accept it. The reason? Well, they discover that their plane is transient. It hasn't settled, and the latent aura coming off anything associated with the world makes it clear that some time relatively soon the world will decay back into primordial energy.

For the merchant, this means that even though the world is rich in resources to plunder, it's not worth trading for, because it's basically counterfeit money. For the PCs, it means that if they don't find some way to fix their world, they're going to dissolve into nothingness.

 

[Terwox]

...I really like the plot hook. Neat way to open up into an epic plot.

...and I can't think of any good NPCs for the town. Doh.

 

[Arkhandus]

Hrrm.... One idea so far on how you could have that sorta-Planescapey feel without simply making a big powerful threat like Her Serenity to keep things from getting too out-of-hand.....

In the early times, a proto-deity formed from the will and activities of many mortals in the first city of the world. This proto-deity was nothing more than a manifestation of the will and desire for Law and security, to protect the early peoples from the greater beasts and entities that came and went through the myriad portals. A single-minded force, this proto-deity acted to enforce the sense of Law and security that his/her/its unwitting creators had so fervently wanted, in the wake of so much Chaos and powermongering by the outsiders.

The proto-deity eventually created a small army of potent constructs, built as much from his/her/its own Law-given-physical-form as from normal materials. So dedicated was he/she/it to the goal of making these Law-manifestations and deploying them to ensure order, that he/she/it invested his/her/its own being into the constructs, losing his/her/its own limited sentience and individuality to give eternal life, will, and purpose to the Law-constructs. He/she/it created, and became, the Inevitables.

From that point onward, the Inevitables have patrolled the infant world and single-mindedly enforced the basic Lawful principles they had each been created to protect. They are simple, abstract Laws for the most part, such as retribution for killing, when not necessary for survival and the expansion of civilization. They do not deal with modern concepts or ideals, such as money or loyalty, they just keep civilization from being destroyed or ousted by powerful or selfish creatures and people.

And the Inevitables are finite in number. When they are destroyed, their essence returns to the nexus where they were first created, and eventually they reform from local materials, but any Inevitable fully destroyed (not just physically) is irreplaceable. Their numbers have only diminished marginally over time, but as the world grows, their small legion has more and more area to patrol, and more and more people in the population centers to watch over. They will not be able to perform their duty indefinitely; eventually they will be too few in number compared to other creatures, and too scattered, unable to amass any significant force against any serious threat to Civilization.

Even now, they are only moderately effective. The wilderness is still mostly unwatched, and there are many holes and tunnels and other spaces amongst the cities that Inevitables have never found. Many Inevitables are busy just ensuring that massive threats do not pass through some of the more dangerous portals; even though many of them are safe, the Inevitables are obligated to remain on-guard at any significantly dangerous portal their kind discovers.

 

[Voadam]

The local bronze age smiths aren't human or dwarf but Azer, accentuate the living flame aspects and they seem familiar (dwarven smith) but exotic and different (not even humanoid but elemental planar living beings).

 

[Geoff Watson]

Each bar has an angel, demon, and devil as drinking buddies (or gambling/partying together, whatever).

That's what a previous DM used to show that it was a Planescape campaign.

Geoff.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

You've got some very cool ideas, as usual, I'll be stealing a few of those ideas for my next campaign . A few off the cuff ideas:

I want to go for a feel somewhat akin to the 2nd edition Planescape, where there were all manner of powerful entities, and the world was vast, but extreme conflict was rare, and every place had an air of mystery.

One of my favorite archetypes from Planescape was the owner of the mysterious shop down on the corner that has all sorts of weird antiquities. Not really a magic item shop, although some of the items are probably weird little magical items, but more of an inter-planar junk shop. The shop owner is usually overly protective of his wares. You can also put a dungeon or mini-adventure in a pocket dimension in the back room. These shops are also a great source of portal keys (in a traditional planescape game).

I would like some ideas for 'mini-games' to run the PCs through to show them growing up.

You could use the puzzles/mini-games and rules that I use in my Underoo Avengers games:

• A foot (or other sort) of race using a gambling mechanic. Each participant in the race sets their own DC for a skill check at each round in the race. Beating the DC means that their "score" for the round is equal to the DC they chose. Failing the DC means that they start to go "out of control" (for a foot race you could say they start to tire) and it becomes increasingly difficult to beat the DC. The person with the highest score after a set number of rounds wins the race. I've got complete rules somewhere that actually make sense, if you're interested.
• Have the players put on a play or tell a story. This one is always a riot and could relive any number of childhood experiences.

I can get you a more complete list of the types of puzzles that I've used if those sound interesting.

I'm toying with the idea that there is no night. It's always bright, because the world floats in a primordial starscape that glows constantly, something like a nebula.

I played in a world once that had a similar concept. One cool thing that the DM did was have the different astrological combinations have different mechanical effects. So, when certain celestial bodies were in the heavens, there was more ambient light and certain schools of magic were more effective, like it was easier to heal or harder to heal. At lower levels, we would actually plan our adventures around gaining those bonuses (or at least avoiding the penalties).

NSCUCodeMonkey

 

[BullMarkOne]

I played in a world once that had a similar concept. One cool thing that the DM did was have the different astrological combinations have different mechanical effects. So, when certain celestial bodies were in the heavens, there was more ambient light and certain schools of magic were more effective, like it was easier to heal or harder to heal. At lower levels, we would actually plan our adventures around gaining those bonuses (or at least avoiding the penalties).

NSCUCodeMonkey

Sounds somewhat similar to how the Moons worked in 1ed Dragonlance, a little more complex maybe, but definately a cool concept.

Maybe assign an astrological sign to each school of magic. Invent a couple of bodies (moons, planets what have you) to act as amplifiers or dampers. Assign each modifier body a period, and an effect. Then whip up something particularly impressive that happens when everything comes into alignment. Make up a boatload of conflicting rumors about what happens during a planetary alignment. One shouldn't have happened in a long long time, but might be coming up soon. Maybe the last alignment was the birth of the world, and the next one could be the end of it (according to some).

You could even whip up a little card wheel with all the signs around it, and wheels for each of the modifier bodies (with different numbers of sections depending on what kind of period you'd like for the body in question)