D&D General Which D&D for Hometown Heroes?

[bedir than]

Note: The "which D&D" part of the question includes D&D simulacra and adjacent games, from OSE to Shadowdark to Pathfinder. But not like Daggerheart, Draw Steel or 13th Age.

Now what do I mean by "hometown heroes"? I mean a campaign centered on the PCs home town/village, where the majority of the "action" in the campaign revolves around the town and its inhabitants, with a strong focus on NPC relationships and (eventually) the PCs taking positions of prominence in town (if they desire). Less of a focus on fights and treasure hunting, with adventures coming to town more often (the weird carnival shows up, a monster migration happens, some hedge wizard accidentally summons something, etc).

So which version of D&D would you use for such a campaign? Why? What does that version offer? Or, which extra products would you use to help you run that game -- 3PP or old or current?

And as an aside (but obviously related to which version of D&D) how would you handle XP and leveling? How long would you extend levels? And what would you make adventures look like?

I'm using the 5e ecosystem with 2024 as the base rules with a dash of Black Flag, A5e and 2014 for exactly this campaign. They're leveling every three sessions (or so). Our biggest modifications resolve around rest and downtime.

A5e leans into non-combat encounters. Black Flag helps with monsters that are familiar. 2014 with expansions really, really helps downtime, which I try to weave into the Bastion system, but it's not quite working.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Literally the focus of the fantastic Beyond the Wall and Other Stories, which is basically a modded 1E.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, a zero-prep OSR roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures is a zero-prep roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

www.flatlandgames.com

Incredible, incredible game worth picking up just to see the character creation, village creation and adventure generation rules.

If I were going to run a campaign about local kids rising up to protect their town and explore the mysterious world outside its walls, it's absolutely the place I'd start.

Currently on sale for less than $5 at DriveThruRPG.

 

[Reynard]

Literally the focus of the fantastic Beyond the Wall and Other Stories, which is basically a modded 1E.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, a zero-prep OSR roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures is a zero-prep roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

www.flatlandgames.com

Incredible, incredible game worth picking up just to see the character creation, village creation and adventure generation rules.

If I were going to run a campaign about local kids rising up to protect their town and explore the mysterious world outside its walls, it's absolutely the place I'd start.

Currently on sale for less than $5 at DriveThruRPG.

Oh, look at that, I totally forgot that I owned this thing.

 

[djotaku]

I think for what you're asking - any of them should work just fine. I'm only dipping my toe in the Paizo games, but since you included them in this list, they may have more formal rules for social encounters (using victory points, I think?) that might make a more social campaign work. But nothing you said makes me think you can't just do this with 5e (any variant).

As for leveling up, if you're not doing much fighting, that would seem to be a pretty easy argument for milestone leveling. If you're doing that, typically you would have an exponential drop-off. Like 1->2 is one session. 2->3 is two. But then 3->4 might be four or so. And so on. So that you don't end up at 20 too fast.

 

[Reynard]

Literally the focus of the fantastic Beyond the Wall and Other Stories, which is basically a modded 1E.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, a zero-prep OSR roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures is a zero-prep roleplaying game you can play in an afternoon

www.flatlandgames.com

Incredible, incredible game worth picking up just to see the character creation, village creation and adventure generation rules.

If I were going to run a campaign about local kids rising up to protect their town and explore the mysterious world outside its walls, it's absolutely the place I'd start.

Currently on sale for less than $5 at DriveThruRPG.

Scanning through it, I think there is some interesting stuff here to adapt to Shadowdark to build a "cozy" SD game about the village and the threats it faces. The biggest thing would be, I think, to pivot XP away from treasure finding to something to do with protecting the community and building and maintaining relationships.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Scanning through it, I think there is some interesting stuff here to adapt to Shadowdark to build a "cozy" SD game about the village and the threats it faces. The biggest thing would be, I think, to pivot XP away from treasure finding to something to do with protecting the community and building and maintaining relationships.

I would probably assign story awards like that to different treasure levels, with "save the town from being destroyed" the equivalent to finding a legendary treasure, etc.

 

[Reynard]

So thinking more about this, core 5E does not really offer anything to help with this. That said, there are probably thousands of 3pp books that support different aspects. Does anyone have any recommendations for 5E 3PP books that are aimed at integrating play into the small town, developing characters more deeply outside of combat, building legacies and even generations into play, and so on?

Thanks.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

So thinking more about this, core 5E does not really offer anything to help with this. That said, there are probably thousands of 3pp books that support different aspects. Does anyone have any recommendations for 5E 3PP books that are aimed at integrating play into the small town, developing characters more deeply outside of combat, building legacies and even generations into play, and so on?

Thanks.

...I do not. But that sounds like a cool product I would buy on sight!

For starter towns, I think Paizo does this very well. They have a number of iconic starter towns in their adventure paths. There's a book called "Sandpoint: Light of the Lost Coast" which IMHO is the best "starter town" from Paizo.

For lower power games, I love Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard. It's a great ruleset that's easy for 5E players to pick up. It's well suited for both grittier games and for games with a lot of downtime.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't think it's quite what you're after, but Home works with 5e (probably other editions too) where you start in a hamlet and build it up as you gain resources. It's a small hexcrawl setting so keeps you local.

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