Category Archives: Campaigns

City Creation: Mood, Theme

Posted on 3 June 2009 | Leave a comment

Mood and theme may seem like something that should’ve been left behind in English Lit. 101. Yet, I’ve found them very useful for  game development; they give me a jumping-off point, particularly when I need to make things up on the fly.

Mood

Many cities and towns seem to have an overall “feel” about them. Think about it — how often have you heard the phrase “a sleepy little town” or a “bustling city”. These are over-generalizations, but they give you a basic idea of a location’s mood. I’ve lived in several states and many cities on both coasts of the US and every town I’ve ever called home has its own, distinctive feel. L.A. always seemed to be in a hurry — almost frenetic , while Seattle boomed with enthusiasm and optimism. Eugene, Oregon was reactionary, but with a strong sense of community and Fuquay-Varina, NC is friendly and open. Of course, everyone’s going to have their own impressions of an area.

I want Meadowbrook to have the feeling of a busy trade town. While not a major stop on the river’s trade route, it should have a enough business to make it a brisk — though not booming — “port of call”. The permanent residents would be used to having travelers coming and going, so visitors (like the PCs) should be treated courteously and welcomed in the “tourist areas” of the town. However, it’s still a small enough community that new people would stand out; it’s not a town a stranger could disappear into.

Most of the town’s residents would be farmers, craftsmen (and women), and dock hands. Hardworking, “salt of the earth” folk who still find time to sit down with their families. So let’s call the mood of the town “industrious”.

Theme

I like to think of a theme as an open-ended question or a pair of opposing keywords. Sometimes, I know exactly what theme I want to explore. For example, I might set up a kingdom in turmoil just for the purpose of dealing with questions such as “Is it possible to be gentle and still be an effective monarch?” Other times, such as here with Meadowbrook, some other aspect serves as the town’s inspiration and I need to figure out a theme that fits my concept so far.This is generally where I need some help.

As a visual designer, I find pictures extremely helpful. So, frequently, I’ll turn to a tarot deck, find an image that seems to fit, look up the card’s meaning an build a theme around that. For Meadowbrook, I decided to do a slight modification and pulled out the Fortune Deck from my Everway set. Looking through the pictures on the cards, I found one that captured the feel of Meadowbrook for me: Spring. (Here’s an alternate version of the card — very similar to the original for those of you who are like me and need a visual reference). Spring offers the choice between stagnation and new growth. We’ll need to figure out what “new growth” opportunities Meadowbrook has available to it. For now, though, we’ll just keep it in mind as we continue to develop the town.

Tomorrow: Town infrastructure

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City Creation: Name, Pop.

Posted on 2 June 2009 | 2 comments

This is the first installment of my fantasy city creation, using the Location Worksheet as a basis.

City Name

First off, our city needs a name. I want something that sounds reasonable for a fantasy world, but not so wacky it invites player jokes. Many real-world cities are based on some feature of the land around them or are taken from the name of a real person who either founded the city or was someone the city founders admired. This is the first location in my new world to be detailed, so it means I’ll need to make something up, whether that’s surrounding features or famous people. The name “Meadowbrook” comes to mind. I like the sound of it — it fits very well in a European-derived fantasy setting and should be easy for players (and myself) to remember.

The name “Meadowbrook” implies two geographical features — a meadow and a brook. The meadow is easy — the town’s build on what used to be meadow. This implies that the area is surrounded by forest, so we’ll go with that.

A brook is a small stream and it makes sense that someone would found a city near a source of fresh water. Since brooks aren’t very big, this is probably more of a village than a true city, unless there are other sources of fresh water near by or water can be brought in through magical and/or mechanical means. For the sake of the exercise, let’s say the term “brook” is actually a case of poetic license and that the source of fresh water is actually a minor river. This gives us the option of making the settlement more of a small town than a village, closer to my original intent. I want someplace that adventurers can use as a base to find food, lodging and supplies. Placing it on a small river means that Meadowbrook could be a stop on a trade route,  which could give adventurers access  to materials and resources that a more isolated town wouldn’t have. A boon, especially for mages who might need to replenish spell components.

Population

The next item on the Location Worksheet is “Mortal Population”. For fantasy game purposes, I’m going to change that to “Demi-human population”. This would cover humans, elves, half-elves, haflings, dwarves, etc. — most PC races. A quick search on the Internet turns up a document titled Medieval Demographics Made Easy, which gives population figures for kingdoms, settlements, towns, villages, etc. The numbers in the article seem reasonable; it lists towns as having a population of 1,000-8,000 people, with the average being around 2,500. I grew up in a town with a population of 4000 people, so I’m comfortable developing a town in that population range. Being a trade town, we can afford a somewhat higher population than the average, so we’ll go with 4000 permanent inhabitants.

Note, this is 4000 inhabitants total, including men, women, and children of all races. As far as racial composition goes, I want elves to be something of a rarity in this world, so we’ll say there are no permanent elven inhabitants. However, we can bring in something of their mystique by having a single half-elf. I want to stick with the tradition of dwarves being tied to stone and mines; a town called “Meadowbrook” just doesn’t sound appealing to hardy mountain-dwellers. So while dwarves certainly pass through here taking their goods to market, the town doesn’t have any permanent dwarven residents. On the other hand, a name like “Meadowbrook”, in my opinion, just begs for halflings. I want humans to be the most common race of this world, so this town seems perfect for a joint human-halfling settlement, with a “little” quarter (the halfling area) and a “big” quarter (the human neighborhoods), with the main trade and city centers catering to both. I want the gnomes of this world to be clannish, prefering to live in their own lands way from humans. Still, if there’s an gnomish population in the area, there could be a few gnome crafters living in the town — say five or so skilled artisans who live and work in the “little” quarter.

So here’s the population breakdown by race:

Total inhabitants: 4000
Human inhabitants: 2000
Halfling inhabitants: 1994
Elven inhabitants: 0
Dwarven inhabitants: 0
Half-Elf inhabitants: 1
Gnome inhabitants: 5

Tomorrow: mood and theme

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Location Worksheet

Posted on 1 June 2009 | Leave a comment

Note: all references in this article to World of Darkness games are to these game’s Second Edition, because that’s what I’m currently running 😉 .

All but the most causual “beer-and-pretzels” games need locations — cities, kingdome, what have you. Another tool White Wolf included in their first edition Storyteller’s Handbook was a city worksheet. It included spaces for you to fill in the city’s name, population, places of importance or interest, TV stations, newspapers, mayor’s name, city council members, radio stations, etc.

Like with the Story Worksheet, I took White Wolf’s bare-bones sheet and expanded to fit my needs. I find that creating extensive location information helps me run better games; having it at my fingertips makes it much easier to determine the outcome of unexpected player actions. For example, if a group of Mage PCs decide (without warning) to attack the local Tremere Chantry, I already have the information about where it’s located and who it’s members are. These pieces of information alone can help me work up the Chantry’s defenses on the fly, based on the type of building, surrounding neighborhood, and the resources it’s local members have at their disposal.

The topics covered by my expanded World of Darkness city sheet are:

  • City Name
  • Mortal Population [number]
  • Kindred Population [number]
  • Wraith Population  [number]
  • Faery Population  [number]
  • Mage Population  [number]
  • Immortal Population [number]
  • Mood — the overall “feel” of the city
  • Theme — cities can have themes the same way games and campaigns can
  • Description of the city’s “look”
  • Places of interest/importance
  • Mayor [name] controlled by [faction]
  • Police Chief [name] controlled by [faction]
  • Precinct Captains [names] controlled by [faction]
  • Prominent Uniformed Cops [names] controlled by [faction]
  • Internal Affairs Detectives [names] controlled by [faction]
  • Newspapers [name] controlled by [faction]
  • TV Stations/Networks [names] controlled by [factions]
  • Radio Stations [names] controlled by [factions]
  • City Council Members [names] controlled by [factions]
  • Libraries
  • Museums
  • Mortal Information
    • Society of Leopold
      • Provincial
      • Local Cenacula
      • Abbes and members
      • Factions, orders, and sects
    • Arcanum
      • Chapter house
      • Chancellor
      • Local colonies
      • Lodges
      • Colleges
    • Other Prominent Mortals
  • Kindred Information
    • Number of Camarilla members
    • Number of Sabbat members
    • Number of other kindred
    • Prince
    • Prince’s haven
    • Primogen role (advisers to the prince, ruling body, figureheads, etc.)
    • Primogen members and clans
    • Tremere Regent
    • Tremere chantry members and ranks
    • Antitribu regent, if any
    • Antitribu chantry members and ranks
    • Archbishop
    • Archbishop’s haven
    • Bishops
    • Anarch overlord (if any)
    • Gangs and their leaders
    • Notable neutrals
    • Other Kindred of importance
    • Vampire “Town Hall”
    • Elysium
    • The Rack
    • Other places of importance to Kindred
    • Number of each clan residing in city
  • Changing Breed Information
    • Number of Gaian Garou
    • Number of Black Spiral Dancers
    • Number of Gurahl
    • Number of Bastet
    • Number of Corax
    • Number of Nuwisha
    • Number of Ratkin
    • Garou Information
      • King (if any)
      • Notable packs and their members
      • Caers and who controls them
      • Factions
      • Number of members for each tribe (including Ronin)
  • Mage Information
    • Number of Tradition mages
    • Number of Technocracy mages
    • Number of Nephandi
    • Number of Marauders
    • Traditions
      • Council members
      • Chantries
      • Number of each Tradition residing in city
    • Technocracy
      • Technocratic council members
      • Constructs
      • Number of each Convention residing in city
    • Nephandi groups
    • Nodes
    • Labyrints
    • Marauder groups

With some work, this sheet could serve as the foundation for any game, including fantasy games like D-n-D. For the next several days, I’ll take this sheet and use it to create a brand-new fantasy city. I’m going to try and make the city as game-mechanic free as possible, so that it could work for any fantasy game.

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Campaign Worksheet

Posted on 29 May 2009 | Leave a comment

Yesterday, I talked about the adventure/story worksheet. Today, I’m covering the campaign/chronicle/saga worksheet. The campaign worksheet is very similar to the adventure sheet, but expanded to cover the entire arc of the campaign. For my campaign sheets, I use basically the same questions and topics, but answer them from the perspective of the entire campaign. If you’re like me and your PCs shape the direction of your campaign, you’re going to find your campaign diverging from the plot ideas you wrote down at the beginning. That’s okay; I’ll frequently do three or even four versions of the campaign worksheet. I date them and keep them with the rest of my game notes. If I run the campaign again, the next group of PCs may develop the plot of the game similarly to the way I expected the game to originally, so I find having the multiple versions of the sheet extremely helpful.

I do add one thing to the campaign worksheet that’s not in my adventure sheet: a list of adventures. In games where I’m frequently using canned adventures (such as AD&D), I find this list invaluable for helping me remember what the PCs did over the course of the campaign. My Storyteller, Amber, and such games don’t usually end up with specific adventures; for these break the campaign up into logical sections and briefly summarize them.

Next time: The city/location worksheet.

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Recycling

Posted on 20 April 2009 | 2 comments

I’m a big fan of recycling. I recycle everything I can, from cans to bottles to magazines, cardboard, etc. Heck, I even use blank areas of junk mail for game notes.

I also recycle games. I don’t mean putting game rulebooks through the shredder (they can have my books when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers); I recycle actual campaigns. I’ve moved extensively in my life (including three cross-country moves), which means changing gaming groups every three to four years. As a single parent, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to work on my campaigns. So, if I’m starting with a new group of players, I dig out my notes from a campaign I ran successfully in another place, have my players create new characters, and off we go!

One caveat with reusing old campaigns: you can’t expect the story to play out the same. Don’t force your new PCs to stick with the storyline created by the old PCs. I usually rename my campaigns, to remind myself that this is a different game with different characters. I usually end up reusing the first adventure, the NPCs, and the events that happen in the larger world (the parts outside of the PCs’ control). And be prepared for the new campaign to vary wildly from the old one. In one Vampire game I ran, the PCs were charged with the job of selecting a new Prince for their city from a set group of NPCs. The second group  chose the Gangrel I’d originally thought was one of the three top candidates on the list. The first group to play that campaign chose a Malkavian loner, who’d be selected because he wasn’t even present! As you can imagine, the two versions of the game had drastically different tones.

Still, it saves me a major amount of work. I already know the NPCs, so I have a pretty good idea of how they’ll react to new characters and new situations. This is one thing I particularly enjoy about reusing old campaigns — for me, reusing the NPCs feels much like visiting with old friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I know what’s going on in the world at large, so I only need to focus on changes made by the characters. This approach doesn’t work for everyone and it doesn’t work for every campaign. I’ve retired entire storylines because the last group to play them out created events that became so integral to the world, I couldn’t imagine events happening any differently than they did.

But if you’re pressed for time, it just might work for you.

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