D&D General How do you run Town Exploration in your games.

[iserith]

Indeed, unless you (the general you), as @iserith does, establish that towns just aren’t a place where adventuring happens. Then it’s just a conceit of the game that you’re never going to overhear rumors of a plot to overthrow the local nobility or whatever, because that’s not the kind of game you’re playing in.

And, I know you (Lanefan) wouldn’t run or want to play in a game with such a conceit in place. But I can see why others might want to just handwave such concerns away in favor of focusing exclusively on adventuring out in the wild and in dungeons and such.

Also, I took a good hard look at town play some years ago and why it seems like such a big part of a lot of DMs' games. Turn on any game being streamed (or sit in on a non-streamed game) and they will almost certainly be in town interviewing some NPC, talking to each other in a tavern, or shopping. I wondered why this was so common.

Certainly, in part, we can assume people just like it. But given players in my experience will tend to like much of what their friendly DM will present, I concluded that for many DMs, town play is just easier to prep. You don't need much to just improvise NPCs on the spot or engage in low- or no-stakes interactions like shopping or tavern chats. One can prep the hell out of a town, if one wanted, but it's not necessary. Certainly not as necessary as putting together random encounter tables for wilderness exploration, hex maps, or dungeons to be crawled with all of their contents. So it makes logical sense to me that town play comes up a lot because it eats up a lot of time at a game session for very little prep.

So then I started thinking about what it is players actually want out of towns based on my experience. It all seems to boil down to just a few things: rest, shop, gather info. I figure if the town just performs those key roles for players, they'll have all they need. Slap a bit of flavor on top of it, then don't play out every minute of their visit, and we're golden. That's how I ended up with what I do now.

On the rare occasions when I run a city-based game, I still use this basic formula, but obviously add adventure locations within the context of the city with multiple options for the rest/shop/info tasks with trade-offs for each. For example, you can gather info at this one place on the cheap, but there's a higher chance of a complication. Another place is more expensive, but safer.

 

[payn]

Im pretty heavily driven by political intrigue and faction play. That means my towns are not just pit stops or downtime places. They often are full of interesting NPCs and places that will lead to adventures. I think the Paizo AP write ups are my go to foundation. A map, list of interesting places, a few write ups of notable NPCs, and go from there. Also, Stormreach in DDO got my way more into cities being adventure places in my D&D games.

I have been running a Traveller game and found an interesting new dynamic. The PCs often travel to new solar systems and despite many of them being in the same sub-sector, they have wildly differing cultures, law levels, etc... In D&D terms many of these places are the next town over. This would seem a bit out of place in D&D; but why should it? It has gotten me even more interested in spicing up my towns for my D&D style games in the future.

If you stick to the traditional D&D style where towns are just resting places between dungeons, then obviously all this above is too much.

 

[jgsugden]

How the town is explored/described/etc... will depend upon tthe story being told, and the role of the town, or parts of the town, in that story.

There is no 'one size fits all' approach for me. I have towns that have existed in my campaign world for nearly 40 years. I have a clear mental picture of some of these towns, and I can remember what they looked like before certain tragedies changed them as well as what they look like now. I have other towns that PCs have been through a hundred times, but I have no record of any details about the town at all.

It all comes down to how and why the group is going into the town, why they do (or do not) stay, and what happens when they're leaving. Those types of story details will determine what I need to tell them. If it is part of a story, I'll have elements of the town prepared for when they go looking around the town (often in search of something), but I'll often just wing things as I go and jot down a few notes about what they encounter when they are there as I improvise those encounters.

However, there are a few general rules about how I describe the town presentation:

1.) Whether I'm improvising or have planned out materials, I try to make it seem like everything is planned. When the PCs look down an alley, I want them to feel like there is already an answer as to what is down the alley. If they pick a random grave in the abandoned graveyard and dig it up, I want them to wonder why I knew exactly what was there. I want them to feel like they're only encountering planned materials.

2.) I try to be consistent. Once I establish something, I take notes and make sure I fold it into the town records. I don't want them ever to return someplace and see me forget about the little nuance that caught their ear when I first described it. To do this, I often base locations in my game on real world locations I know.

3.) I have about 1000 different small story hooks that I can pull out and weave into a town at will. These give me 'minor quests' to assign to players that I can place if they take enough time in a location. This gives them motion to the story of their adventure, even when they're bogging down with unexpected minutia in a location.

 

[Asisreo]

Also, I took a good hard look at town play some years ago and why it seems like such a big part of a lot of DMs' games. Turn on any game being streamed (or sit in on a non-streamed game) and they will almost certainly be in town interviewing some NPC, talking to each other in a tavern, or shopping. I wondered why this was so common.

Certainly, in part, we can assume people just like it. But given players in my experience will tend to like much of what their friendly DM will present, I concluded that for many DMs, town play is just easier to prep. You don't need much to just improvise NPCs on the spot or engage in low- or no-stakes interactions like shopping or tavern chats. One can prep the hell out of a town, if one wanted, but it's not necessary. Certainly not as necessary as putting together random encounter tables for wilderness exploration, hex maps, or dungeons to be crawled with all of their contents. So it makes logical sense to me that town play comes up a lot because it eats up a lot of time at a game session for very little prep.

So then I started thinking about what it is players actually want out of towns based on my experience. It all seems to boil down to just a few things: rest, shop, gather info. I figure if the town just performs those key roles for players, they'll have all they need. Slap a bit of flavor on top of it, then don't play out every minute of their visit, and we're golden. That's how I ended up with what I do now.

On the rare occasions when I run a city-based game, I still use this basic formula, but obviously add adventure locations within the context of the city with multiple options for the rest/shop/info tasks with trade-offs for each. For example, you can gather info at this one place on the cheap, but there's a higher chance of a complication. Another place is more expensive, but safer.

Honestly, it's true. Sometimes I'll extend downtime a little just to finish prepping the Dungeon they're determined to go.

 

[FallenRX]

I just adapt them from XGtE downtime activities, but reduce them to a gold cost and a single roll for a useful benefit. If I'm dealing with multiple towns in the sandbox, I will split up the available tasks between the towns to encourage the PCs to visit multiple places depending on their needs at the time. Then I make sure that each task in the town speaks to the nature or theme of the town in some way. Gathering lore in one town, for example, might mostly work the same way as another town, but it feels a little different.

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Huh this is super interesting i dig it quite a bit.