So we’ve spent two columns breathing life into Rethmar, which started as just another dot and name on the big, big map of the Realms. And, frankly, I did the bare minimum for anyone except flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants DMs.
Yet the key to a great D&D campaign is player agency; through their Player Characters, they decide where the focus of play is put, and moved to, and what time around the gaming table gets spent on. As the DM enables that but also constantly (and deftly, in the background) places an endless array of shiny things here and there, like a skillful house stager, to catch player interest and both ward off boredom and give them umpteen new directions for play to head in. And even more importantly, imparts the feeling that, like a young child wide-eyed in a candy store, the world is not just their oyster, but a big bed full of all sorts of oysters and far more wonderful things to be had.
Or to put it another way, the world is a vast and wonderful place, so why doesn’t it feel that way to most of us, almost all of the time? (Well, lack of time, and money, and opportunities to look up and see the wonderful for all of the obstacles, worries, and frustrations of the moment that are in the way. But I digress into philosophizing again, when I should be worldbuilding…)
So let’s assume that the players have decided that their characters like it in Rethmar. (They and the gods alone know why, but for whatever reasons, they do.) And they want to stay in Rethmar for a bit, to explore the dungeons beneath it, or shake the town to its very foundations by reordering local society and perhaps even making themselves the rulers of the place, or just use the town as a base to rest and heal and make babies in, between forays out into the wider and even more dangerous Realms around.
That means Rethmar is going to have to be more than a set of false fronts with a few named NPCs at their stations to facilitate PC strutting about…it’s going to need more depth. (I’m always reminded at this point in my worldbuilding of the touching tale about The Missionary film, in which its crew built a street of homes as a set, in a bombed-out area of London, and an old woman was discovered there staring wonderstruck, murmuring, “My house came back.” Except, of course, it sadly hadn’t; only a façade had returned.)
So, as M might say, “Lots to be done.”
But what, specifically?
Back to our categories (Power Groups And Prominents, Current Clack, Recent Events and What’s Going On, and What’s Whispered About), to bolster them all. (This is going, I warn you right now, to take more than just this column.)
Right, let’s crack on.
For starters, the Walrus looks rather lonely, so let’s add a few more colourful local NPCs.
First, a homeless street-wanderer, a wrinkled old crone of foul mouth and dark humour, “Old Meg” (Megarathra Dulyn), inevitably called a “witch” by Rethmarren but no more than a rag-and-bone merchant, maker and seller of herbal balms and ointments against your aches, pains, and skin blemishes. She wanders the streets with some pet dogs who will defend her to their deaths if need be (and are quite street-smart enough to hamstring foes or leap to knock them down or jaw-snatch weapons out of hands), making most of her living covertly delivering messages and small items from one citizen to another. She sees all, will sell what she’s seen and heard for a copper or two, and knows a lot about what’s going on in Rethmar.
Second, a hopelessly optimistic and ambitious get-rich-quick fat and bustling little merchant, Owelind Pheffend, who’s trying to get backers for all sorts of mercantile schemes, everything from making local sherries and brandies for sale all over Faerûn using local wildcherries and bitter-root for flavouring, and pickling local ground-worms and wartback toads as a wealthy-tables delicacy, to using some doddering old retired mages who live in town to enchant flying ships, and building a local navy of skyfaring merchant vessels to connect the Sword Coast with Chessenta, Sembia, and the Moonsea lands. His days are spent rushing between one person to the next in Rethmar, talking up these notions so as to get backers.
And thirdly, a mysterious and presumably beautiful woman who goes about masked and cowl-robed, so most folk only ever get to see her eyes and hands. She calls herself “Loomen,” and says she’s “a widow, retired from life”—which seems odd, considering she can be found loitering in doorways and dark corners, or strolling along alleys, at all hours, anywhere in Rethmar. Alone, and not seeming to do anything but calmly watching her surroundings. (In the highsun hours, she shops for cheese and fruit and vegetables, to take home and dine on in her tiny but luxuriously-appointed rented rooms.) Everyone loves a mystery; what is she up to? And who is she, really?
(My answers: her real name is Nareera Danthar, and she’s the daughter of a disgraced Zhentarim wizard and is skilled only in pottery and bookkeeping; right now, she’s making her living as a decoy for the Zhentarim, attracting local attention to herself while the real undercover Zhent agents come and go in Rethmar and advance Zhent plans hopefully unnoticed by other factions. But I’m sure any DM can come up with better answers, more suited to their own unfolding campaign, in a trice.)
To these NPCs, let’s add two power groups a-brewing (that is, not yet risen to public attention locally, or to any real power, but vying to get it). For interest, make one of them a group of adventurers slightly more powerful than the PCs, and with better connections; the Zhentarim have hired them to “arrange matters” in Rethmar to establish a secret safehouse and a warehouse for the faction, and pave the way for the Zhents to quietly subvert—or replace with their own—the local rulership. Let’s call them Branathra’s Blades, and make them all female, of a variety of races from all over Faerûn, and give them either some of the more unique class features, or some ‘wild talents’ (psionic or natural magical immunities or abilities) so they can surprise the PCs a time or two, in encounters.
The other power group? Very different: some of the caravan merchants who often pass through Rethmar on their runs have been eying it as a possible base, and to that end, are willing to sponsor some local shopkeepers to oversee and share the benefits of an inn-stables-wagon-repair-shop-resupply haven to be built in an old, decaying warehouse surrounded by their existing shops. They’ve formed a little cabal they call The Haven, and as non-violent businessmen, want to hire adventurers (the PCs, perhaps, but some outlander adventurers to begin with) to guard their operations and construction of the haven. Their attitude towards both the PCs and Branthra’s Blades, at the outset, is “a plague on both your houses.” Adventurers are always trouble, so Rethmar would be better off without any. Except us, of course.
Next column, we’ll continue with our initial stab at adding depth to Rethmar.
Do the detailed floorplans of some of the town’s buildings while you wait (after all, the PCs are going to need a home, or will feel the need to burst into someone else’s, as adventurers inevitably do, so…)
Oh, and where do wastes (human and kitchen and otherwise) go? We’ll need a comic-relief gruff pair of father-and-son or mother-and-daughter nightsoil wagon operators, I’m thinking…
Ah. My thinking. That’s where all the problems usually start.
Yet the key to a great D&D campaign is player agency; through their Player Characters, they decide where the focus of play is put, and moved to, and what time around the gaming table gets spent on. As the DM enables that but also constantly (and deftly, in the background) places an endless array of shiny things here and there, like a skillful house stager, to catch player interest and both ward off boredom and give them umpteen new directions for play to head in. And even more importantly, imparts the feeling that, like a young child wide-eyed in a candy store, the world is not just their oyster, but a big bed full of all sorts of oysters and far more wonderful things to be had.
Or to put it another way, the world is a vast and wonderful place, so why doesn’t it feel that way to most of us, almost all of the time? (Well, lack of time, and money, and opportunities to look up and see the wonderful for all of the obstacles, worries, and frustrations of the moment that are in the way. But I digress into philosophizing again, when I should be worldbuilding…)
So let’s assume that the players have decided that their characters like it in Rethmar. (They and the gods alone know why, but for whatever reasons, they do.) And they want to stay in Rethmar for a bit, to explore the dungeons beneath it, or shake the town to its very foundations by reordering local society and perhaps even making themselves the rulers of the place, or just use the town as a base to rest and heal and make babies in, between forays out into the wider and even more dangerous Realms around.
That means Rethmar is going to have to be more than a set of false fronts with a few named NPCs at their stations to facilitate PC strutting about…it’s going to need more depth. (I’m always reminded at this point in my worldbuilding of the touching tale about The Missionary film, in which its crew built a street of homes as a set, in a bombed-out area of London, and an old woman was discovered there staring wonderstruck, murmuring, “My house came back.” Except, of course, it sadly hadn’t; only a façade had returned.)
So, as M might say, “Lots to be done.”
But what, specifically?
Back to our categories (Power Groups And Prominents, Current Clack, Recent Events and What’s Going On, and What’s Whispered About), to bolster them all. (This is going, I warn you right now, to take more than just this column.)
Right, let’s crack on.
For starters, the Walrus looks rather lonely, so let’s add a few more colourful local NPCs.
First, a homeless street-wanderer, a wrinkled old crone of foul mouth and dark humour, “Old Meg” (Megarathra Dulyn), inevitably called a “witch” by Rethmarren but no more than a rag-and-bone merchant, maker and seller of herbal balms and ointments against your aches, pains, and skin blemishes. She wanders the streets with some pet dogs who will defend her to their deaths if need be (and are quite street-smart enough to hamstring foes or leap to knock them down or jaw-snatch weapons out of hands), making most of her living covertly delivering messages and small items from one citizen to another. She sees all, will sell what she’s seen and heard for a copper or two, and knows a lot about what’s going on in Rethmar.
Second, a hopelessly optimistic and ambitious get-rich-quick fat and bustling little merchant, Owelind Pheffend, who’s trying to get backers for all sorts of mercantile schemes, everything from making local sherries and brandies for sale all over Faerûn using local wildcherries and bitter-root for flavouring, and pickling local ground-worms and wartback toads as a wealthy-tables delicacy, to using some doddering old retired mages who live in town to enchant flying ships, and building a local navy of skyfaring merchant vessels to connect the Sword Coast with Chessenta, Sembia, and the Moonsea lands. His days are spent rushing between one person to the next in Rethmar, talking up these notions so as to get backers.
And thirdly, a mysterious and presumably beautiful woman who goes about masked and cowl-robed, so most folk only ever get to see her eyes and hands. She calls herself “Loomen,” and says she’s “a widow, retired from life”—which seems odd, considering she can be found loitering in doorways and dark corners, or strolling along alleys, at all hours, anywhere in Rethmar. Alone, and not seeming to do anything but calmly watching her surroundings. (In the highsun hours, she shops for cheese and fruit and vegetables, to take home and dine on in her tiny but luxuriously-appointed rented rooms.) Everyone loves a mystery; what is she up to? And who is she, really?
(My answers: her real name is Nareera Danthar, and she’s the daughter of a disgraced Zhentarim wizard and is skilled only in pottery and bookkeeping; right now, she’s making her living as a decoy for the Zhentarim, attracting local attention to herself while the real undercover Zhent agents come and go in Rethmar and advance Zhent plans hopefully unnoticed by other factions. But I’m sure any DM can come up with better answers, more suited to their own unfolding campaign, in a trice.)
To these NPCs, let’s add two power groups a-brewing (that is, not yet risen to public attention locally, or to any real power, but vying to get it). For interest, make one of them a group of adventurers slightly more powerful than the PCs, and with better connections; the Zhentarim have hired them to “arrange matters” in Rethmar to establish a secret safehouse and a warehouse for the faction, and pave the way for the Zhents to quietly subvert—or replace with their own—the local rulership. Let’s call them Branathra’s Blades, and make them all female, of a variety of races from all over Faerûn, and give them either some of the more unique class features, or some ‘wild talents’ (psionic or natural magical immunities or abilities) so they can surprise the PCs a time or two, in encounters.
The other power group? Very different: some of the caravan merchants who often pass through Rethmar on their runs have been eying it as a possible base, and to that end, are willing to sponsor some local shopkeepers to oversee and share the benefits of an inn-stables-wagon-repair-shop-resupply haven to be built in an old, decaying warehouse surrounded by their existing shops. They’ve formed a little cabal they call The Haven, and as non-violent businessmen, want to hire adventurers (the PCs, perhaps, but some outlander adventurers to begin with) to guard their operations and construction of the haven. Their attitude towards both the PCs and Branthra’s Blades, at the outset, is “a plague on both your houses.” Adventurers are always trouble, so Rethmar would be better off without any. Except us, of course.
Next column, we’ll continue with our initial stab at adding depth to Rethmar.
Do the detailed floorplans of some of the town’s buildings while you wait (after all, the PCs are going to need a home, or will feel the need to burst into someone else’s, as adventurers inevitably do, so…)
Oh, and where do wastes (human and kitchen and otherwise) go? We’ll need a comic-relief gruff pair of father-and-son or mother-and-daughter nightsoil wagon operators, I’m thinking…
Ah. My thinking. That’s where all the problems usually start.
