D&D 5E How do you use cities in your campaigns?

[doctorbadwolf]

It's not that I'm even jonesing for combat encounters. I just want meaningful stakes in the scenes on which we're spending our valuable time. Running errands of the sort that I referenced in my initial posts just aren't those.



There are probably better systems out there for playing out other scenarios. Right tool for the right job and all that. I do what it says to do on the tin and it seems to work great.

If the game is going to be just that one very narrow thing, perhaps there is a better tool for the job.
DnD is generally use, IME, to run a pretty varied game, in which a single party will spend time doing a very wide range of things.

 

[Don Durito]

Linguistic drift. Much as how “Milestone XP” has come to mean “we don’t use XP” because that’s how it’s used, “West Marches” has more or less come to mean “not regularly scheduled,” or occasionally “a big group”.

And would actually work really well for an urban rogues gallery game. If all the PCs are part of the same loose association or gang, then they could jump in or out - and they're all already in the same place and you never have to worry about ending session with pcs in a dungeon or in the wilderness.

 

[iserith]

If the game is going to be just that one very narrow thing, perhaps there is a better tool for the job.
DnD is generally use, IME, to run a pretty varied game, in which a single party will spend time doing a very wide range of things.

Sure. In my game, those things will entail adventuring since I think the game works best that way. I'll play some other game if I don't want to do that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure. In my game, those things will entail adventuring since I think the game works best that way. I'll play some other game if I don't want to do that.

I mean, I’m glad you’re havin fun.

For me, dnd works fine for all the things we do, and we aren’t going to switch systems for like...one session? Part of a session? Like here’s what I don’t get, with what you keep saying.

Do you switch games when the group wants to do something in a given session that isn’t “adventuring”, or do you just literally not let them do those things? Neither seems like something I’d want to do as a DM, nor something I’d tolerate as a player.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'll play some other game if I don't want to do that.

Like...this is where I get stuck trying to understand your position, and just what exactly you even mean.

IME, it’s...not all or nothing? So, the only way to “play some other game if I don’t want to do that”, would be to;

play different game systems within a single “story” or campaign, like “okay you guys have gotten embroiled in politics, so we are going to play the Game of Thrones game for this story arc”.

or

not allow the players to pursue things that don’t involve the kind of adventure I think the game is best at.

Neither of those would literally ever be on the table in any group I’ve ever met. Full stop.

The players are gonna pursue what they think the character would pursue. That means forming alliances, planning capers, navigating court intrigue, negotiating with Medusa crime leaders against a common enemy, and commissioning and crafting better tools for the things they’re trying to do, among many other things. Some of that is going to send them out into the wilderness, sure, but Id have to heavy handedly force it for all of that to involve “adventure” in the classic sense.

 

[iserith]

I mean, I’m glad you’re havin fun.

For me, dnd works fine for all the things we do, and we aren’t going to switch systems for like...one session? Part of a session? Like here’s what I don’t get, with what you keep saying.

Do you switch games when the group wants to do something in a given session that isn’t “adventuring”, or do you just literally not let them do those things? Neither seems like something I’d want to do as a DM, nor something I’d tolerate as a player.

It helps when a group agrees on the kind of game that D&D is good at supporting and then works toward that goal together.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

It helps when a group agrees on the kind of game that D&D is good at supporting and then works toward that goal together.

I agree with that. When we're doing the sort of non-adventuring I was talking about...we're barely using the system at all. Not even ability checks for most of it. The party plays with cantrips and I look at their passive "knowledge" skills to determine what information they get for free, and their Charisma and appearance to determine how people initially react to them. But other than that, it's more freeform role-playing than anything else at that point.

I'm a strong proponent of using the right system for the game and setting you want to play. Not really a major topic for the D&D threads, but it's a hugely important consideration for an RPGer overall.

In this particular case, I'm actually not a fan of systems having rules for this sort of freeform role-playing. I've tried to like them and failed. Rules are for when you need to consistently determine things that go beyond describing environments and role-playing the choices and conversations of PCs and NPCs. (In the rare instance during such role-playing when the results of an interaction attempt with an NPC are non-obvious, the DMG interaction rules are actually pretty decent. Much better than the traditional Charisma check irrationally opposed by their Wisdom rather than their resistance to the idea.)

So, for my tastes in what I want rules to cover, I'm not sure D&D is any less suited for this particular element of play than most other games. Of course, if we weren't spending enough time doing the sorts of things that D&D is designed for (mostly combat with some exploration) there wouldn't be much point using D&D for the game at all.*

*Well, I guess in this specific case there would be, since I don't like playing D&D settings with other rules systems, but that's a peculiar idiosyncrasy in my relationship to D&D and its settings, not a general RPG philosophy.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It helps when a group agrees on the kind of game that D&D is good at supporting and then works toward that goal together.

Okay, you’ve made yourself clear. I’ll stop trying to figure out what you’re talking about and where you’re coming from.

 

[Blue]

I've seen it precisely once. About a month ago, when we specifically did an extended dungeon crawl session (something we pretty much don't do) to see how it went and discovered that 5E really does work much better that way (it took 3 weeks to play out one day in game). My Fighter went from feeling completely overshadowed by the Paladin and spellcasters to probably the most valuable player.

I resolved at that point not to ignore the recommended spacing in future.

I love 5e, but the inter-class balance around that recommend 6-8 is my biggest problem with running it. People (correctly) think that they can balance the difficulty by having fewer, harder encounters, but what they don't realize is that it does not balance the resource attrition between the at-will and the long-rest classes.

 

[Xetheral]

For those who try to limit table times in cities, I'm curious what you do about legwork? Cities tend to be by far the best places to research one's opposition, find historical records about the next adventure location or reports of adventurers who have previously explored it, and get intelligence on the current state of the roads. If you're limiting table time in cities, I'm assuming you can't be roleplaying out the legwork? Do you abstract the legwork with some dice rolls? Or do your PCs generally not do any legwork in the first place?

And what about building and maintaining networks of contacts? Do you roleplay that out? Abstract it? Or skip it?