D&D General What do you expect in a starter village?

[Paul Farquhar]

on that note, a job board at the back of the tavern.

Something original, rather than tired old tropes.

 

[Thunder Brother]

More gold than you would expect a village to have.

A bit suspicious, if you think about it.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

An obnoxious NPC with an annoying accent who will bedevil the player characters for the entire campaign, his irritating nature only matched by his ability to escape death.

 

[Doug McCrae]

One or more villagers to be evil and secretly allied with the monsters.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If you run a 1st level group in a starter village to set the tone, what would you expect to find?

Are you asking what we'd do as GMs -- suggested by "if you run" -- or what we'd expect to encounter as players in a game run by someone else -- suggested by "expect to find"?

 

[Aging Bard]

This is a nice comment. I'll highlight two points:

Otherwise, you'll spend hours fantastically detailing a wondrous village with prices for the Inn's food and a menu, detailing the unique woodwork on the carpenter's latest gazebo project, and no one is going to care. The PCs, absent an adventure, aren't going to visit, much less care, about the carpenter, the mill, the cobbler, and so on, unless there's a reason to. Absent that reason, you don't need a detailed village and can simply get to the good stuff.

This is why it's very handy to have tables ready to procedurally generate settlement content and encounters. A couple important features should be placed per settlement, but otherwise generate as you go. You can't be infinitely creative, and random tables can get your imagination going.

There's a place to stay, a place to buy supplies up to X gold piece value, and go.

All of these would be limited by settlement size in my campaign, which creates an incentive to set out and adventure to gain access to better stuff. For example, at the level of village or smaller, not all armor and weapons will be available, perhaps most even. And while there probably could be a tavern, an inn would be unlikely. The PCs will likely have to ask around for lodging, haggle for room & board, which requires NPC interaction and could be another source of information or rumors. And to toucanbuzz's point, the searching and haggling aren't the fun parts, but the new information and rumors could be.

 

[Marc_C]

A good story hook that will get the ball rolling.

Preferably the PC were born and raised in or near the village. Ideally they know each other prior to the start of the campaign. Maybe they are childhood friends, some might even be siblings.

Make it personal so they care about what happens to the village.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.

If you run a 1st level group in a starter village to set the tone, what would you expect to find?

Is the starting village intended to be a place we keep coming back to, or just leave? I think they're designed very differently based on that.

If it's a place we're going to come back to, I think we want some decent amenities, perhaps slightly unlikely ones for a village - i.e. a temple/church, a smithy run by a competent smith, maybe an aging retired wizard in her slightly tumble-down tower a mile outside of town, and importantly, friendly/likeable locals, not jerks.

If it's a starting point that won't be returned to, you can go more naturalistic with amenities, and you can set the tone with the villagers - is the campaign spooky? Then all the villagers are scared and/or weird. Is the campaign about fighting off some kind of advancing threat which might eventually hit the village? Then there are a lot of sympathetic/likeable villagers, there are good kids around, maybe a friendly dog or three. Is the campaign about darker fantasy where the PCs are facing a hostile world? Then the villagers are jerks with weird local laws who sneer at adventurers.

It's worth noting DMs often naughty word this up. I've seen a lot of DMs who wanted to run heroic campaigns start in villages full of jerks, and it's like, that's completely the wrong thing to do.

 

[aco175]

I started my last campaign in Phandalin with a fight, right after the PCs introduced each other and before they could really explore the town. I had some cargo brought in from nearby ruins contain some elemental mephits that escape and start attacking villagers. The PCs were the closest and started fighting together, killing most of them before reinforcements could arrive.

This allowed the players to introduce their PCs and see what they could do. It also gave them a first mission when the owner of the wagon showed and wanted to hire them to go back to the ruins where they found this stuff. They also met a few NPCs from town that bought them a drink or pat on the back for helping out. Started to make them feel welcome in town.

 

[BookTenTiger]

A way to make things better. (You see the smithy has been boarded up, with a sign reading "Gone to fight the dragon.")

An NPC who really loves dishing out rumors and gossip. (You see a group of villagers washing clothes by the well. An old woman looks up and says, "Newcomers, eh? You here to solve our goblin problem?")

A weird mysterious thing the characters can ask about. (You see an old statue, its features work away by time and rain, but with a strange fresh rune painted on it's stone shield.)

With those three things in place, I think any starting village would be ready for new adventures!