Many games have a religious aspect or deal with religious themes. Fantasy game, in particular often include pantheons of gods for the PC to pick from. But unless the PC is cleric or paladin, his religious life ends up being nothing more than minor roleplaying color, something the PC does when he remembers.

For GMs (and players) who want to have religion play a more active role in the lives of all PCs, here’s a way to make religion have a bigger impact on the game: give the characters a chance of divine intervention (often abbreviated DI). Some games have this built into their systems, the main one coming to mind is In Nomine, where a roll of 111 (on 3 6-sided dice) means god smiles favorably on you, while 666 means you’ve attracted attention from the other direction…

Now these interventions don’t have be huge deus ex machina plot devices. Even minor little “miracles” can make a difference. Perhaps the PCs luck on a useful map of the island they needed to go to or a spell goes off with particularly great results or the crowd they’re talking to turns out to be especially receptive to their message…you get the picture. That’s not to say the PCs couldn’t be favored with a grand miracle — it all depends on what fits your game. If gods walk upon the earth or regularly take an active part in mortal affairs, they’re more likely to grant an impressive “miracle” than gods who are rarely seen or work exclusively through their followers.

Mechanics-wise, I’d have players roll for a chance of DI for their characters. It should be an extremely small chance, say 1-5%. I’d also say that players would only get to make a DI roll if they’ve been playing their characters very devoutly before that point. And even then, only when such a role would really matter. How and when player could roll would be up to you, as the GM. If you want the gods to take a more active hand, then you could allow players to roll whenever they wanted to; on the other hand, if you want them to be more “hands-off”, players could only roll under life-or-death circumstances (as defined by you).

The nice thing about using a percentile roll, is that you can make it a “sliding scale”–the more devout a character is, the more chance she has of getting a DI. You could even add a chance for an enemy of the PC’s god could take notice and decide to get back at the deity by messing with his followers. Say that a roll of 98-00 on percentile dice brings divine favor, while a roll of 01-03 brings the attention of the “opposite side”.

Note that this “opposite side” doesn’t have to be demonic or infernal; it could simply be a rival of the PC’s god. For example, in the Greek pantheon Ares and Athene seemed to have some “sibling rivalry” going on. In the case of a “bad DI”, say a PC, a devout follower of Athene is involved with important peace treaty talks that are crucial to the well-being of her kingdom. The kingdom has been at war with a rival for many years, but has finally become open to peace negotiations. Now the PC’s player, knowing how important these talks are, gets permission from her GM to try for a DI and rolls a 01. The GM rules that Ares, who desires the war to continue, sees an opportunity to mess with his sister and causes the other negotiating party to mis-hear our PC’s greeting as an serious insult, making negotiations start off on a bad foot. Or he could be so incensed that he calls for an immediate attack on the player’s forces.

By making your players get GM approval to try for a DI, you have a way to limit the power level of your game. No player would automatically have a “right” to roll for one, even if he perceives it as a life-or-death situation. This would help keep players from becoming dependent on divinities to get them out of trouble.

Next time, I’ll make a list of possible DI results.

[Image courtesy of wonderlane via Flickr Creative Commons]

Articles Zemanta thinks may be related

• City Government Power Bases – Religion (campaignmastery.com)
• Henotheism, Kathenothism and Polytheism (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)
• Durkheim and religious experience (orgtheory.wordpress.com)

Making it Meaningful: Religion in RPGs is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

This month’s blog carnival topic is worldbuilding. How do you get the worlds you use for your game? Do you create your own or use a published world? If you create your own, where did you start? What do you like best about building your own settings? What suggestions and resources do you have for teaching others how to build worlds of the their own? What are the pros and cons of building your own world? Where do you get the inspiration for your worlds.

It’s a broad topic, I know. I’d like to stick to the whys and wherefores of building worlds, rather than details of the worlds themselves. Instead of telling us about your world, tell us how you created it and why, as well as sharing any tips you may have for others who’d like to build their own game world, but don’t know where to start.

I’m looking forward to seeing your posts; just put the URL of your post in the comments section below and at the end of the month, I’ll do a wrap-up post listing everyone’s contributions.

February Blog Carnival: Worldbuilding is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

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X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

It’s been a long-time coming, but I’ve finally done it. After nearly thirty years of kicking the idea around (and thanks to the guys at the Gamer Lifestyle program), I’ve finally take the plunge and started my own small-press game company, rpgGM.com.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now, but just never really was in a position to do before. At least for now, rpgGM.com will focus on publishing my own original game world, Guang Keshar. The world is going to be published for sale as PDFs in a modular format — that way you only have to buy what interests you. If you want something about the Great Houses and the ruling Council, you can buy that. If you’re interested only in the geography of the world itself, then that’ll be available too.Many of these smaller products will be gathered up and published as larger compilation products (with some new material thrown in for good measure ), which will give you a price break from buy each one separately.

Soon I’ll also have a newsletter going out dedicated to the development of this world. It’ll contain exclusive content, development news, sneak peeks at products, game world tips and much more. The first issue of this should come out the end of December or beginning of January. You can sign up for it now on the company website. The site will also have free information, company and product news and tips, as well providing a place for you to provide us with feedback.

I’m really excited about this and can’t wait to share my product with everyone. But don’t worry about loosing this blog — I’ll still be posting here at least once a week (I’m trying for twice, but we’ll have to see what time permits) with the same type of content I’ve been writing all along. The newsletter Beg, Borrow, and Steal will still be published, though I may have to go to once a month, rather than once a week.

[Sales pitch over, we now return you to our regularly scheduled ponderings ]

It’s a Brave New World — Guang Keshar is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

With this being Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, I got to thinking about harvest festivals in general. I rarely see harvest celebrations in RPGs and yet in real life, they’ve been an important part of life throughout at least a large part of human history. Harvest festivals bring families and communities together; surely our fantasy worlds would also have similar rituals and festivals?

(Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmiehomeschoolmom/ / CC BY 2.0)

Harvest Moon Festival

Celebrated in the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the year, the Harvest Moon Festival draws family members from far and near to celebrate the beauty of the moon together. The Chinese believe that the moon is  at it’s fullest and brightest, symbolizing completion and abundance. Like Thanksgiving in America, people use this harvest festival to give thanks to the gods for the blessings they’ve received over the past year.

This ancient festival is celebrated with parades, brightly colored lanterns, feasting and moon gazing. Children stay up late and lovers holding hands dot benches, hill tops and river banks. The most well-known of foods eaten are moon cakes – small pastries stuffed with a variety of fillings, the most common being a lotus seed paste. Traditional foods for this celebration are red, the color of luck and fortune.

Lanterns festoon public and private areas. Traditional lanterns take the shape of carp, butterflies, rabbits, lobsters and star fruits, among others and are usually colored red. Also known as “Women’s Day”, it makes the beginning of the “dark of the year”, the period of time when the days grow shorter and the nights long. This time of the year is considered yin or female. Women set up altars to the moon goddess Hengo or Chang-o, decorating them with moon cakes, round foods, tea, rice and wine.

When the moon is full, mankind is one

Sources

• Chinese Harvest Festival
• Chinese Mid Autumn Festival or Moon Cake Festival
• Chinese Mid Autumn Moon Festival
• Mid Autumn Festival
• Mid-Autumn Moon Festival 2009

Other Posts in Series:

• Let Us Give Thanks: Homowo Festivals or “Hoot at Hunger”

Let Us Give Thanks: Chinese Harvest Moon Festival is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

With this being Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, I got to thinking about harvest festivals in general. I rarely see harvest celebrations in RPGs and yet in real life, they’ve been an important part of life throughout at least a large part of human history. Harvest festivals bring families and communities together; surely our fantasy worlds would also have similar rituals and festivals?

For the rest of the month, I’m going to detail various harvest festivals from around the world that you can use as inspiration for your own games.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkendall/ / CC BY 2.0)

Homowo or “Hoot at Hunger”

This is a festival celebrated by the African Ga people, marking their migration to Ghana. According to tradition, the Ga people suffered a severe famine; Homowo celebrates the bountiful harvest they achieved after reaching their new homeland. Essentially, Homowo consists of sharing a meal with the living and dead members of the family in celebration of the harvest. It also marks the beginning of the Ga year.

The festival draws family members from far and near back to their ancestral towns. Normal daily business is suspended and the festival is considered a time of social harmony where debt payments may not be demanded, nor can oaths be taken or legal proceedings begun. It’s believed that ancestral spirits will cause the death of anyone who breaks these traditions. In a fantasy setting, this could be literally true.

Homowo Eve

On the eve of Homowo, men bring their father-in-laws bottles of gin and women bring their mother-in-laws firewood for cooking the next day’s feast. The senior women of a family smear the window sills of their home with ochre to protect themselves from any evil spirits that might enter the town during the night. A fantasy version of this could have the ochre blessed with a Protection from Evil or similar spell.

Modernly, guns are fired to warn people to stay inside their homes as the ancestral spirits enter the town on this night, but you could have the local clerics use bells, horns, or other noisemakers for the same purpose. Late that night, the Ga king sacrifices a sheep and shares it with senior members of the Ga government.

Homowo Day

Early Homowo morning, women of the household prepare a feast for the family. The male heads of household pour libations and a portion of the feast food on the graves of their ancestral spirits. Then the family gathers and eats together, ignoring the usual social hierarchy were senior members of the house eat before junior members and men eat before women.

After the feast, the community celebrates with a dance during which social norms are suspended. Anyone may dance and people may wear the clothes of the opposite sex, sing songs making fun of important people, and/or dress in tattered rags. Everyone can dance as equals. While the dance continues, all social constraints are thrown off.

Ngoo Wala — The Day of Remembrance

In Accra, this takes place the day after Homowo. Families gather to mourn their members who died during the last year. People go from house to house greeting friends and relatives, wishing them well in the upcoming year. This is a customary day to settle disputes and arrange marriages.

Three weeks later, Homowo closes with a children’s celebration that involves a legal looting of the local markets.

Sources

• African Harvest Festivals
• Homowo: Celebrating Community in Ga Culture
• Homowo Festival
• Homowo Festival in Ghana (little text, but has some photos)

Let Us Give Thanks: Homowo Festivals or “Hoot at Hunger” is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Sometimes creating a believable city or town is one of the hardest parts of building an adventure or campaign. You don’t want all your towns to look the same and you definitely don’t want to get stuck in the generic “fantasy town”, consisting of a tavern/bar, inn or other lodgings, magic shoppe, etc.

Below I’ve gathered a list of web resources to help provide city building know-how and inspiration. Enjoy!

• City Overseer 3D. Software to help you build cities for your game. I haven’t tried it, yet. If anyone else has, I’d love it if you wrote a review for me. If it’s well-written, I’ll even publish it here!
• City Rant Part One & City Rant Part Two. Some great ideas for city building basics, including details usually overlooked, like what are the conditions of animals in the city and using sound to describe your city.
• Culture and Curfew in Fantasy City. More an article on the darker side of Liverpool, London. But it does ask questions and bring up points useful for adapting to a fantasy or SF city.
• Fantasy Cities – Wizards Community. A forum board with some great advice and example of building fantasy cities.
• Fantasy City Project. A collaborative fantasy city being built on-line and you can join in.
• Free fantasy city generator downloads. A download site for free software designed to help you create a city. I have no idea of the quality of safety of this software. Use at your own risk.
• How to make the “shantytown” in your city REALLY gritty/scary. A forum discussion about ways to “dirty up” your city.
• How to Plan a Country or Region in a Fantasy RPG World. While not focused on city creation itself, this article does give some step-by-step advice on creating RPG settings that could easily be applied to cities.
• How to Start a Campaign: City Building (The Harrow: The RPG Collection). Some good ideas for setting up the basics of a new city.
• Shared World’s Top Five Real Fantasy/SF Cities. Fantasy and SF authors pick real-world cities that would make great locations for stories.
• Welcome to the Page of City Resources. A list of links useful for creating fantasy cities
• What might help me create the history of a fantasy city-state? A question posed to Yahoo! Answers. The reply brings up some good points to consider when creating your city.

Here’s some listing of world-building sites who’s information can be adapted for city creation:

• 30 Days of WorldBuilding. A step-by-step guide to creating a fantasy world
• Creating the Fantasy World
• Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions Part 1. A listo f questions to answer as you’re creating your fantasy setting.
• How to Create Fantasy Worlds
• Magical World Builder

Related Posts:

• Location Worksheet
• Meadowbrook. Details of an example fantasy city

“Where are we again?”: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Since the PCs aren’t likely to interact with Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths other than to have items repaired or commission new ones, I’m not going to spend much time detailing them.

Most Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths focus on creating practical items — horseshoes, plows and farming implements, iron nails and building tools, etc. Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy is the exception to the rule: he’s only swordsmith in Meadowbrook. While he can and does do other types of blacksmithing to pay the bills, his primary love is creating strong, beautiful blades.

Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy

Kael is a former ranger who settled down in Meadowbrook. While his home and shop are actually outside of the city proper, he and his wife, Janna, are frequent faces in town, especially at The Butter Churn tavern. While adventuring, Kael met and fell in love with Janna Stoutpoppy, a skilled fighter in the group he traveled with. When the two of them decided to retire and settle down, they chose Meadowbrook — Janna’s home town.

While Kael and Janna aren’t the only human-halfling couple Meadowbrook’s history, the match is unusual enough to raise eyebrows and start gossip tongues wagging. The Stoutpoppys had some difficulty accepting an human son-in-law, but Kael’s friendly, outgoing personality finally won over Janna’s parents. The rest of the Stoutpoppy clan, including Janna’s two sisters and her brother aren’t so generous of spirit and the divide has split appart the clan. Janna’s siblings have not spoken to her for the last three years. The couple are very much in love, but the situation has put a strain on their marriage; currently, the two of them are discussing plans to move to a larger city where they won’t stand out so much.

A skilled storyteller, Kael can frequently be found at The Butter Churn when not working. He’s frequently pressed to tell stories of his and Janna’s younger, wilder days.

Janna Stoutpoppy

Janna herself is much quieter than her husband. She’s friendly enough, but much more reserved and usually content to let her more outgoing half speak for both of them.

Her split with her family weighs heavily on her, though she does her best not to show it. She’s glad her parents have come around about Kael, but the fact that her siblings and most of her clan refuse to speak to her saddens her greatly. She also experiences some discrimination in the town; a few of the merchants, both human and halfling, refuse to serve her or Kael. She loves Kael deeply, but the situation is putting a lot of strain on her. She and Kael have begun to talk about moving to an area where there are more couples like them, something she’s not sure she wants to do. She feels torn by her love for Kael and her love for her family.

For her own part, Janna is an excellent fighter, extremely skilled at taking down opponents several times her size. She’s agile and intelligent, though very shy without a sword in her hand. Her shyness can come off as cold or haughty to those meeting her for the first time.

• Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy, human ranger (AD&D terms: 10th level ranger).
• Janna Stoutpoppy, halfling fighter/warrior (AD&D terms: 11th level fighter)

Note about halfling names in Meadowbrook’s world: Among halflings, property is passed down matriliniarly, from mother to daughter. Consequently, most husbands take their wife’s surname after marriage, adding it after their own. Kael and Janna followed this tradition, hoping that would help them gain more acceptence in Janna’s home town. Unfortunately, this hasn’t had the effect they’d desired.

City Creation: Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy, Swordsmith is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

The next entry on our list of Notable People is “Clerics of the local shrines”. While these would, indeed, be notable people (the head priest/ess of the largest shrines would likely have considerable influence), religions differ greatly from one game system to the next and one campaign to the next. So much so, in fact, that I’m going to leave it up to individual GMs to create the details for their own games.

However, religion gives us an opportunity to bring our theme (new growth vs. stagnation) into play again. Before becoming a trade center, Meadowbrook was primarily a farming town, so gods of planting and harvest would’ve played a very important role in town life. The new focus on trade and commerce would have brought with more followers of gods favoring those aspects. This could cause friction between the clergy of the established temples and the clergy of the newer temples. Because the growth has been so recent, many of the newer temples are likely still in construction and competition for the best building locations could be very “hot”. Plus, there could be friction between the halfling temples (most likely among the established temples) and human temples (most of new temples would fall into this category).

In a more historically-based game, such as Ars Magica, you’re going to have the influence of Christianity. Depending on when in the medieval era you base your game, you could have the new Christian religion coming into conflict with the older pagan gods. Or you could set up Meadowbrook as a rare town with a large Jewish population and explore prejudice medievel Christians had for Judism. If you wanted to base Meadowbrook in a Middle Eastern-inspired setting, you could play up the conflict between the established Christian and the “new” Islamic faiths. And there’s always the antagonism between the Western, Roman, Chuch and the Easter, Greek, Church.

For traditional fantasy settings, Meadowbrook’s most influential temples will be dedicated to gods of harvest and trade, as well as those pertaining to the home and family. Gods of healing and prosperity would also have a large following among both “old-timers” and newcomers. Halfling gods would also be popular and could potentially even have many human followers, especially since there may be some families in Meadowbrook comprised of both halfling and human members, bonded by marriage.

Gods of lesser importance would be those pertaining to travel (popular among the traders passing through) and luck. Gods dedicated to magic would likely have few followers in the town, but certainly there would be some small shrines set up here and there, especially among the fix-it guild. Tammi Ravenswing and other guilds would have a small shrine dedicated to trickster or thieving gods hidden away.

The least influential gods would be those related to war and evil, as well as those related to other demi-humans. Darius, the town’s only resident with elven blood, would have a small shrine dedicated to the elven gods in his home and/or shop. The few gnomish residents would also have small shrines dedicated their gods, though they are also likely to follow some of the halfling gods, as well.

Next time: Kari Tallfellow, the Butter Churn, and places of hospitality.

City Creation: Religion is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

What would a fantasy game town be without a thieves guild? Whether the PCs work with it or oppose it, the local thieves guild frequently provides many opportunities for adventure.

Meadowbrook’s thieves guild is extremely small: 10 members. Until the recent trade boom, Meadowbrook had no thieves guild — there simply weren’t enough thieves in town. The rise in commerce, however, brought with it a commensurate rise in crime. Larceny has become lucrative in Meadowbrook and Tammi Ravenswing and her group of rogues are reaping the lion’s share.

Tammi Ravenswing — Guildmistress

Tammi came to Meadowbrook from Sundown, a city two weeks ride to the west. Having engineered an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the guildmaster of Sundown’s major thieves guild, Ravenswing decided discretion was the better part of valor and made her way east for parts unknown. Arriving in Meadowbrook about the same time the new trade did, she saw wide open opportunity. She hand-picked a small group of accomplished rogues to form the town’s first actual thieves guild.

Having been the right-hand assistant to the guildmaster in Sundown, Tammi has clear ideas and experience running a guild. She’s an experienced sneak-thief and cut-purse, having learned her skills as an abandoned child of a prostitute. Sundown’s guild frequently took in orphaned or abandoned children as a means of replenishing their numbers and reducing “freelance” competition. Tammi proved to be extremely talented in matters of stealth and manual dexterity and rose quickly in the guild’s ranks. Had she waited another couple of years, she attempted coup might have been successful; as it was, it nearly cost her life.

Upon arriving in Meadowbrook, Tammi started a courier and body guarding business she named “Sworn Swords”. Sworn Swords acts as a front for the guild and employs three of her guildmembers; the rest of her employees are honest, hardworking private guards and messengers. She frequently employs children to deliver local messages and one of these is her adopted daughter, Gayna (now six). Like Tammi herself, Gayna had been abandoned to the streets at the age of three. Tammi took pity on the starving toddler who attempted to grab her lunch one afternoon.

Gayna is smart and dexterous, a quick learner who’s already showing an interest in swords and other bladed weapons. The warriors of the business have taken the girl under their wing as an unofficial “mascot”. In the last several months, Gayna has discovered her singing voice and Tammi has arranged lessons for her from Darius Sunrunner, in exchange for protecting his store, Doodles, from crime.

Tammi Ravenswing, human thief (AD&D 3.x terms: 8th level rogue). Main skills: appraisal, bluff, diplomacy (guile), pick pockets (slight of hand/legerdemain), escape artist, gather information, lockpicking (open locks), local knowledge [Sundown, Meadowbrook], search, sense motive, ride [horses], awareness (spot), short sword fighting, stealth, knife fighting, archery.

The Guild

Meadowbrook’s thieves guild has no name of its own; it’s refered to simply as “the Guild”. This is intentional, as Tammi doesn’t want the guild’s existence known to outsiders. She’s kept the guild small by design — membership is by invitation only and anyone asking about the guild, even in Meadowbrook’s criminal underground, will be met with blank stares. Tammi has handpicked each member of the guild after conducting extensive research on them. A credit to her people-reading skills: no one who’s been invited to join has turned her down. Tammi wouldn’t force membership; if anyone did decline, though, they would be “encouraged” to move on to another area or town.

Being so small, the guild can’t impose a monoploy on theft in Meadowbrook. Members tithe ½ of their takings to the guild, but in return, they gain a guaranteed (though not necessarily luxurious) income. When times are lean, the guild ensures its members and their immediate family enough to eat and roof over their heads; Tammi also makes certain they have access to any needed health-care. Members are expected to turn over the required portion of all illegal earnings, whether gathered on guild assignment or their own initiative.

Tammi has instituted two strict rules: 1) no guild member may target any customer of Sworn Swords for a minimum of three months after the customer’s last contract and 2) any goods stolen in Meadowbrook cannot be fenced within Meadowbrook lands. These measures make it more difficult for thefts to be tracked back to the guild. Also, Ravenswing has refused to take any assassination contracts, either personally or on behalf of the guild. This isn’t because of any moral leanings; Tammi simply believes that in a town the size of Meadowbrook, the risks outweigh any possible reward.

The guild’s management consists of the guildmistress and her two assistants:

• Tammi Ravenswing, guildmistress, human rogue
• Didio Sparrow Carawaddling, gnome rogue (AD&D: 5th level), “Right-Hand”
• Darla Stoutbarrell, halfling rogue (AD&D: 5th level), “Left-Hand”

City Creation: Thieves Guild is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Town Guard are not employees of Meadowbrook. A guild in their own right, they’re employed by the town council. Each guild tithes a small percentage of their annual income directly to the Town Guard, in return the Guard protects the other guilds from dangers local and foreign. But how many town guard members are there? The 3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide gives a figure of 1 full-time guard for every 100 people, meaning Meadowbrook would have 40 guards, which seems like a reasonable number.

Unlike most guilds, the town guard is actually two separate guilds of 20 members each: the Littletun Guard, who police the halfling areas and the Bigtun Guard, who police the human areas. As you might expect, it would be extremely unusual for the Littletun Guard to have a human member and vice-versa, thought it has occasionally happened. This arrangement has caused some racial tensions, since the dock areas and most stores are located in Bigtun; rumors abound that the best imported goods get diverted away from the docks before they can reach Littletun markets. I’ll leave each GM to determine the truth of these rumors on their own.

Each Tun Guild (as the two “subguilds” are known) has their own guild leader who reports to the Captain of the Guard, the head of the combined guild. These are:

• Captain of the Guard: Bryan Hartman, human fighter [10th level]*
• Littletun Captain: Piper Hillbottom, halfling fighter [8th level]
• Bigtun Captain: Robert Roark, human fighter [6th level]

Guild Structure

As mentioned above, each Tun Guild has it’s own captain, with each captain having two assistant captains. The two assistants supervise the “patrols” — teams of four guild members who monitor the streets of the Tuns.  Guildmembers are skilled warriors/fighters, but not as skilled as your average PC warrior/fighter (in AD&D 3.x terms, guild captains are fighters, but average guild members are warriors). Additionally, each adult citizen of Meadowbrook is required to donate time to the town guard as part of their civic duty.

Each citizen is required to serve two days every three months and is also expected to attend a two-hour weapons/training session once every two weeks, as this citizen force also functions as the town’s defensive militia. Last year, Meadowbrook’s town council passed a law allowing property owners to hire someone else to serve their “civic” time. Officially, the law requires the “stand-ins” to be citizens, but in truth, no one checks papers as long a capable, warm body reports for duty. This has caused resentment among the lower income residents, who see the rich being able to buy their way out of the obligation.

Captain of the Guard: Bryan Hartman

Bryan Hartman is a retired adventurer. Born and bred in Meadowbrook, he wandered distant lands for many years, believing there had to be someplace better out there, someplace he could make a name and a fortune for himself. Instead, he found the longer he was gone, the more he missed his home town. After losing his left hand in a war fought to protect a kingdom he didn’t care about for another bag of money he didn’t really need, Bryan returned to Meadowbrook, bought a large farm just outside of town, married a local girl, and settled down to raise a family. He’s a devoted father and husband who honestly cares about the wellbeing of his home town. He has four children — three daughters and a son — and the eldest daughter seems determined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Like many Meadowbrook natives, he views his town’s recent growth with worry, believing the new-comers will be here only as long as Meadowbrook’s new-found prosperity lasts.

———————

*All levels given are for 3.5 AD&D and are intended to be used as guildelines. If you’re using Meadowbrook with another games system, assume 20th level is the PC maximum, then scale accordingly. So 10th level would be a fighter/warrior/knight who’s about halfway to maximum skill level, etc. For the purposes of creating Meadowbrook, I’m ignoring Epic Level characters – they’re too powerful for inclusion into an “average” town.

You can find a very helpful article about town militias at The Round Table of Bretonnia.

Next time: Tammi Ravenswing and the thieves’ guild.

City Creation: The Town Guard is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Continuing our description of Meadowbrook’s notable citizens, we come to Barsus Tinner, the head of the fix-it guild.

The Fix-It Guild

First off, let’s give the fix-it guild an official name. As low-level arcanists, I can see the guild trying to give themselves a greater sense of status with a lofty-sounding name, something like: “The Noble Brotherhood of Magical Repair Workers”. That being such a mouthful, most of Meadowbrook’s citizens call them “the fix-its”.

The fix-its are low-level wizards and sorcerers who focus on mending inanimate objects. The guild does employ some non-spellcaster repair people, but they can’t become actual guild members until they’ve developed some rudimentary spell-casting ability (in 3.x AD&D, this would mean gaining at least one level of wizard or sorcerer). Since Meadowbrook isn’t a large city, there are only five actual  guild members (as stated in the previous post on Business Demographics). In addition to full guild members, Meadowbrook has three apprentice fix-its and six regular non-magical repair people.

Spellcasters (full guild members):

• Barsus Tinner, guild head. An halfling wizard of mid-to-low ability (in AD&D terms, 6th level). Like most fix-its, Barsus focuses on repair magic, but with a particular talent for reparing metal items (in Ars Magica terms, Muto Terram specialist).  Apprentice: Tommy Tinthorn.
• Kerwi Sorrell, assistant guild head. Human, mid-to-low level sorcerer (AD&D: 5th level). Her main talent is fixing wooden items (Ars: Muto Herbam). Apprentice: Brand Jolan.
• Lyza Marybelle, halfling  wizard, low level (AD&D: 4th level). Especially talented at repairing leather and hide goods (Ars: Muto Animal).
• Ace Ackerly, human sorcerer, low level (AD&D: 4th level). General, all-around fix-it, no particular focus. Apprentice: Tabina Tallflower.
• Aerinlie Mouse Taitewyncoddle, gnome wizard, low level (AD&D 3rd). Very good with creating replacement parts for an item, especially metal parts (Ars: Creo Terram). Mouse especially enjoys fixing complex machinery. He is the newest full member of the guild, having just been granted full status after being Barsus’ apprentice for six years. Aerin likes to experiement and try new combinations and unusual applications of spells. He loves researching new ways of doing things, which has set him at odd with his former master, who believes in using methods and approaches that have stood the test of time. [Here's our theme again -- new growth vs. stagnation].

Each full guild member owns and operates their own shop and is responsible for the employees and appretices who work there.

Non-Spellcasters (Guild Employees):

• Barret Dione. Human, employed by Barsus. Specialty: metal items
• Lenah Maylinn. Human, employed by Barsus. Specialty: fabric items
• Brandiwyn Fairweather. Halfling, employed by Kerwi. Specialty: wooden items. Brandi (as most folks call her), can also perform some minor magics (0-level spells), but didn’t have enough magical talent to progress beyond that. She was Kerwi’s apprentice for a short time, before concentrating on non-magical fixes. She is considered by many members (read: everyone by Barsus) as an unofficial guild member, but has no voting privledges or (officially) guild benefits. Kerwi makes sure she and her three children are well-cared for though and grants Brandi as many of the guild “perks” as she’s able.
• Silas Strongbarrell. Halfling, employed by Lyza. Good all-around fix-it.
• Meredith Danelyn. Human, employed by Ace. Especially good with children’s toys.
• Langdon Roundcopper. Halfling, employed by Mouse. Very talented at fixing clocks and clockwork items.

Apprentices

• Tommy Tinthorn. Halfling, apprenticed to Barsus. Strong potential with metal repairs.
• Brand Jolan. Human, apprenticed to Kerwi. Strong potential with wood and other items derived from plants.
• Tabina Tallflower. Halfling, apprenticed to Ace. Shows a talent for working with stone items.

Each apprentice is assessed by the guild as a whole, before being assigned to a specific guildmember for training. In general, the guild tries to match an apprentice’s potential with a fix-it’s particular specialty, though politics and bribery are not unheard of influences on placement.

All full guild members are also skilled at non-magical repairs. The guild charges more for magical repairs than non-magical ones, but in either case, the guild requires all fix-its to stand behind their work: if a problem reoccurs within a specified period of time (which varies, depending on the nature of the specific repair), guild members are required to fix or replace the item at no cost to the customer.

Barsus Tinner

Barsus has been guild master for almost 20 years. He’s very much focused on traditions and long-established methods for doing things. He views new ideas and approaches with much suspicion, which frequently causes him to butt heads with his former apprentice, Mouse. Tinner believes in a solid days work, reliable and timely repairs and frowns on guild members making “improvements” to a customer’s item — he believes that the item should be made as much like new as possible, but shouldn’t be given more features, functionality,  or capability than the item originally had — unless the customer wants to pay for improvements and “upgrades”, of course.

A widower after 40 years of marriage, Barsus frequently works 10-hour days. No one in town works harder at anything than Barsus does at his repairs. “Hard-working”, “predictable”, and “reliable” are three words he consideres compliments. Which isn’t to say he can’t relax and enjoy himself; after-hours will frequently find him at The Butter Churn, sharing a half-pint and a smoke with other locals.

Next time: Bryan Hartman and the town guard.

City Creation: The Fix-it Guild is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Generally, I don’t detail numbers for the NPCs of my games. Unless I expect the PCs to pick a fight with one of them, I don’t even created stat blocks. I look at the NPC’s history, role in the game, personality and profession to decide what they can do, which is generally I need them to do in a particular situation. If the players start to interact extensively with an NPC, then I’ll create a character sheet for them.

It saves me work, as I only end up detailing the NPCs that need it: Joe, the butcher — who the PCs only see once when they beat him at a card game in the tavern — doesn’t need any details. Even critical or important NPCs don’t usually get more than the very cursory stat treatment, though I’m likely to have several pages of history, background notes, political ties, etc. written out for them. If I need stats, I tend to make them up on the spot, noting them down for future reference. In particular, I don’t sit down and figure out how many levels of Noble or Commoner a particular NPC has.

That being said, I do keep some notes of characters with PC class levels. Most residents of Meadowbrook won’t have PC classes and if they do, they’re not likely to be very high level. The most likely candidates for PC class levels are:

• Our half-elf magic shop shopkeeper
• The head of the fix-it guild
• Head of the town guard
• Head of the thieves’ guild
• Clerics of the local shrines

Just for fun, let’s add some retired adventurers to the town residents:

• The owner of one of the inns
• One of the blacksmiths
• The head of the dockworkers guild

A note about retired adventurers: I’ve never liked the profession of “adventurer”. To me, adventuring is something a character does, not something they are. So, in Meadowbrook, a retired adventurer is someone who went on adventures in their younger days, but has gotten the restlessness out of their blood and settled down. No one advertises for adventurers in my world; instead, you’ll see requests for “hardy souls” or “brave youths”.

That gives us some characters with PC class levels. To that, we can add “notable citizens” who, even without PC class levels, are important to Meadowbrook, to wit:

• The mayor
• The magistrates

Notable Citizens

Let’s create a brief background for each of our “notables”:

Darius Sunrunner
Darius is the only actual resident of Meadowbrook with any elven blood. While elves may stop occasionally for a night or two, they don’t generally like to live within towns; they prefer their own settlements, which they call “groves”. Born of a human mother and an elven father, Darius was raised outside of both cultures. Showing an early talent for music and a prodigious memory, he became a bard, spending almost 20 years as an itinerant musician and “troubleshooter for hire”. Eventually tired of travel, he settled down in Meadowbrook five years ago, just as the town became a trade stop. He opened a magic and “what-not” store he named “Darius’ Doodads”.

More gregarious than many “half-bloods” (who usually inherit their elven parent’s aloofness), Darius enjoys chatting with anyone who comes into his shop. He can frequently be found after hours at The Butter Churn — the favorite watering hole for the town’s residents — trading his songs and stories for dinner or drinks (though never to the point of becoming drunk). He’s free with information and will happily share what he knows with anyone who asks, provided they share their own adventures and stories. He likes Meadowbrook’s quiet and strong sense of community; he has made many friends in both Littletun and Bigtun, making him welcome wherever he goes in town.

Darius’ Doodads (called “Doodles” by the locals) sells magic items, paper goods, antiques, knickknacks and anything unusual that strikes Darius’ fancy. The magic items tend to the practical, as most of his business comes from the local populace, but occasionally he has a magic weapon or “adventuring” item.

Stats: (AD&D 3.5 ed): Male, half-elf, 10th level Bard. Neutral good. Very high charisma-type scores, high intelligence and wisdom scores, average everything else. Darius’ spell list covers a wide variety of spells, with no real focus in any one type. I’m not going to detail out his stat numbers or his spell list for two reasons:

1. I can give him whatever I need him to have when I need it.
2. I want to make these characters transferable to other fantasy games than D&D.

Magic and portability
Whenever Darius uses a spell, I’ll make a note of it, building his spell list as I go along. That way, he doesn’t end up with “useless” spells taking up slots and the spell list is appropriate to the game system being used.

As an example of portability, in 4th ed Ars Magica Darius’ magical arts might look something like this:

Cr 3, In 4, Mu 4, Pe 1, Re4
An 2, Aq 3, Au 3, Co 3, He 1, Ig 2, Im 3, Me 5, Te 2, Vi 4

and might include the following spells:

• Discern Images of Truth and Falsehood
• Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie
• Veil of Invisibility
• The Chiurgeon’s Healing Touch
• Eyes of the Cat
• The Gentle Beast
• Rise of the Feathery Body

And, of course, he’d have the virtue Fairie Blood

[Note: these are just off the top of my head -- I haven't sat down to balance them out according to mechanics rules and the spell list is certainly not exhaustive].

Next time: Notable character continued — Barsus Tinner, the head of the fix-it guild.

City Creation: Character Class Demographics is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Now that we know what kinds and how many of each type of business Meadowbrook has, we can work out how powerful each of those guilds are, how they relate to each other, what part they play in Meadowbrook politics.

We’ve already postulated a split of the town council between the merchant guilds and the craft guilds. Basically, every trade in Meadowbrook would have its own guild, but not all of them would be large enough to play an important factor in the town’s politics. We want the town council to be big enough to allow opportunities for politics, but not so big it becomes unwieldy for the GM.

Guilds and the Town Council

Based on sheer numbers, Meadowbrook’s most influential guilds are:

Merchant Guilds:

• Dock workers (boat-handlers would fall under the jurisdiction of this guild)
• Millers
• Livestock dealers
• Food vendors
• “Hospitality” workers (inn-keepers, pub and restaurant owners, hostlers)

I put millers here, rather in the craft guilds. While millers do, indeed, produce flour, they act more as selling agents for the grain farmers.

Craft Guilds:

• Leatherworkers
• Barbers
• Weavers
• Clothiers
• Masons (for simplicity, lets include all building trade workers here, including roofers, framers, etc.)
• Coopers
• Chandlers

Additionally, a couple of businesses would have more clout when their numbers would suggest:

Others:

• Banks/moneychangers (after all, they hold most of the town’s money)
• Fixits (because of their magical ability, minor as it is)
• Magic shop owner (the owner would be a wizard with actual class levels)

Meta-Guilds: cutting the numbers down to size

That gives us 15 council members, not including the mayor and the two magistrates. That seems awfully large for a town of 4ooo people. We can trim it down some by creating a set of “meta guilds” — guilds made up of related guilds. For instance, we can have a clothing guild, comprised of shoemakers, clothiers, tanners, and dyers. Since this is a fantasy world, we can use history as inspiration, but we don’t have to slavishly follow how the real, historical guilds worked. So, by grouping the above listed guilds into logical “meta guilds” we have:

• Dockworkers
• Grocers (those who provide foodstuffs, comprised of millers, livestock dealers, brewers, butchers, bakers, fishmongers, etc.)
• Hospitality (Inn, restaurants, pubs, hostlers — and lets add food vendors here, too, as a type of restaurant)

and

• Builders (coopers, woodworkers, masons)
• Clothing (weavers, tanners, dyers, shoemakers, milliners — let’s also include barbers here. Even though they don’t make clothes, per se, they still play an important part in developing fashion and appearance)
• Metalworkers (blacksmiths, metalsmiths — let’s also include leather workers here, since they often work closely with the metalworkers to produce their goods of scabbards, harnesses, saddles, etc.)

Finally:

• Magic-workers (fixits, the magic shop owner)
• Bankers

This gives us a town council of 8, a more reasonable size. Add in the mayor and the magistrates, we have total voting council of 11 people.

Politics

Now that we’ve figured out who comprises the council, we can figure out the politics of it. Here’s where we can start to bring in our theme of stagnation vs. growth to flesh out the bare structure and give it some life.

Basically, the town council is split into two sides: the craft guilds and the merchant guilds. We can postulate that the mayor and magistrates’ sympathies lie with which of the two groups they belong to. Or they can attempt to form a third, neutral faction. The merchant guilds would have much to gain by increasing the town’s size, revenue, trade “clout”, etc. While the craft guilds would also benefit from this, lets say they’re the older guilds in the town and are, therefore, more conservative and would perfer things remained “status quo”.

This would imply that the merchants are a newer influence on town. Perhaps Meadowbrook hasn’t been a trade town for very long — it could’ve been primarily a craft town until something changed and caused it become a stop on the trade route (we can figure out the exact reason later) within the last 5 years, or so. This could’ve caused rapid town growth, say 30%, taking the town from a population of 2800 to it’s current population of 4000. This rapid growth would also cause resentment between “old-timers” — those who were born and raised in Meadowbrook — and the “newcomers” who’ve recently moved here.

Information about medieval guilds:

• EH.Net Encyclopedia: Medieval Guilds
• Medieval Guilds]
• Medieval Yarmouth, England

Next time: Character class demographics

City Creation: Guilds and Guild Politics is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Okay, now we’ve got an idea of the kinds of business Meadowbrook might have, how many of each are likely to be there? S. John Ross has an article called Medieval Demographics Made Easy, which lists a number of medieval businesses. He gives each of them a “Support Value” — that is, the number of people it takes to support a single business of that type. I’ll be using that a guide line.

Even though 4000 people seems very small to us, it was a good-sized town in the Middle Ages, which means Meadowbrook would have many different types of businesses:

Millers –Surprisingly, this occupation isn’t listed in Ross’ article. But since even the smallest medieval towns had millers, I’m going to set this support value low. This means Meadowbrook could have as many as 20 millers. Most of them aren’t likely to be in town, though. Logically, I’d place them out closer to the grain fields; the millers could then bring flour into town for sale.

Beer-Makers (Brewers) — How prevalent these would be depends, really, on how safe the water is to drink. Given that magic can be used easily to purify water, people wouldn’t rely on beer as heavily as they did during history. Using Ross’ demographics information, we come up with 3 brewers, which seems about right to me.

Shoemakers — Using the statistics in Ross’ article, we come up with 27 shoemakers (rounded up). This seems excessive to me. Granted, shoes here are made by hand, so more shoemakers are needed than a modern town of 4000 would need. On the other hand, cantrip-level magic can be used to repair items, so shoes could last much longer than they did in reality. So let’s cut down that number to a more reasonable level — let’s say five.

Tailor/Clothiers — Technically, tailors created men’s clothes and dressmakers created women’s; I’m going to combine them and call them “clothiers”. Using the tailor’s SV value, we come up with 16 clothiers. That would seem about right, if Meadowbrook’s people were from the upper classes needing several types of clothing for many different events. But it’s a town of middle- to lower-class working folk and the comment above about magical shoe repair holds true for clothing as well, so let’s cut that number in half: 8.

Barbers – in Meadowbrook, temple healers would handle any doctoring required, so barbers are only required to cut hair. Ten barbers should be sufficient.

Tinkerers – In the real world, tinkerers were unskilled workers who mended things. Typically, they traveled around, rather than being settled in one place. With Mending and other such spells easily available, we can roll all repair-type jobs into “fix-its” who use minor magics to mend a variety of items. This profession would require some skill and study to learn, but still wouldn’t need the years of dedicated training most wizards require. They would be considered a respected tradesmen and, because of that, they’re much more likely to be established members of the community than their real-world counterparts would’ve been. Five of these professionals should should be a good number for a town of Meadowbrook’s size.

Metalsmiths (pot-makers, jewelers) — Blacksmiths work with iron, so metalsmiths would create all non-iron products, including jewelry, silversmithing and goldsmithing. They would be skilled artisans who create fine belt and harness buckles, jewelry, higher-quality eating utensils (everyday ones would be made from wood), serving dishes, etc.

Leatherworkers – These aren’t the tanners; they’re the ones who fashion items from the hides the tanners produce, including saddles, harnesses, ox yokes, straps, book hinges, etc. Some of more clothing-oriented leather goods, such as belts and belt-pouches are more likely to be produced by shoemakers.

Here’s the whole list of businesses for Meadowbrook and how many of each kind there are:

• Millers: 20
• Brewers: 3
• Shoemakers: 5
• Clothiers: 8
• Barbers: 10
• Fix-its (tinkerers): 5
• Metalsmiths: 5
• Butchers: 4 (probably specialized at least between poultry and other meat)
• Weavers: 7
• Masons and bricklayers: 6
• Coopers (barrell-makers): 6
• Tanners (preparing hides and curing them into usable leather): 1. (They would’ve been forced to live outside of town, due to the smell the tanning process makes).
• Leather workers (saddle, harness, scabbard-makers, etc.): 11
• Fishmongers: 4. Meadowbrook’s river doesn’t produce a lot of fish; most of the fishmongers’ goods would be imported from other areas of the country.
• Blacksmiths: 3
• Woodcarvers: 2
• Rope-makers: 2
• Dyers: 1 (would also live outside of the town, for the same reason as the tanners)
• Farmer’s Markets: 2 actual market areas, one in Bigtun and the other in Littletun. Each market would have a 3d10 number of vendors any particular day. More about them in a later post.
• Food Vendors: 10. These are vendors who “patrol” the most popular parts of town, selling prepared foods, much like street “food carts” and “hot dog stands”  you see in major cities today.
• Pubs/Restaurants/Taverns: 10
• Chandler (candlemakers): 6
• Boat-handlers: 20
• Dockworkers: 30-40
• Hostlers (stables): 2. Hostlers are used primarily by visitors, rather than residents.
• Livestock sellers (horses, cattle, sheep, etc.): 20
• Banks/Moneychangers: 1
• Inns: 2
• Bath-Houses: 1
• Beggars: Variable. 2d10 for the number encountered by the PCs on any given day
• Brothels: 0. Streetwalkers: 1d20 for the number encountered by the PCs on any given night/day
• Thieves Guild: 1 small branch office. Most residents don’t even know it exists, though there are rumors
• Assassin’s Guild: 0. There’s just not enough business in a town like Meadowbrook
• Magic Shop: 1. Also doubles as the city’s papermaker and curio shop.
• Temples: At least 1 small one for each of the major deities, plus a “general use” shrine for gods who don’t have enough worshippers in Meadowbrook to have an actual temple

These numbers are beginning estimates and the list of business shouldn’t be considered exhaustive. GMs may find they more/fewer of each business than are listed here, just as they may need to add businesses I’ve overlooked. As always, YMMV.

Tomorrow: Guilds and guild politics

City Creation: Buisness Demographics is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

What kind of businesses does a town need? Despite what fantasy games might imply, towns are more than just the ubiquitous taverns, inns, weaponsmiths, armorers and magic shops we usually see. Most of a town’s business will be to support its own residents, not adventurers, which means that town the PCs are passing through likely doesn’t even have a weaponsmith.

So what kind of businesses does Meadowbrook have? Let’s make a list of businesses the town’s permanent residents are likely to need:

• millers (everybody needs grain ground)
• beer-makers (in medieval Europe, everyone drank beer, even kids. It was safer than the water)
• shoemakers
• tailors/clothiers
• barbers (who also frequently functioned as town doctors)
• pot-makers (tinkerers)
• butchers
• weavers
• masons and bricklayers (and makers)
• coopers
• tanners
• leather workers/saddle and harness makers
• fishmongers
• blacksmiths
• rope-makers
• dyers
• farmer’s markets where town-dweller can buy fruits and vegetables
• food vendors
• pub or tavern
• chandlers

A port town, such as Meadowbrook, would also need:

• boat-handlers
• dockworkers
• hostlers
• banks/moneychangers
• inns (these are only necessary if the town gets many non-residents)
• bath-houses (not actually a necessity, but certainly plausible in a fantasy game setting).

While the town doesn’t need the following, they tend to show up in urban areas anyway:

• beggars
• brothels / streetwalkers

And some favorite fantasy institutions:

• thieves’ guilds
• assassins’ guilds
• magic shops

Next post: Business demographics

City Creation: Businesses is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

I’m going to skip over the “City’s Look” category for now; currently, Meadowbrook isn’t developed enough for me to have an idea of how it looks like yet. Which brings us down the list to “mayor”, “police chief”, etc. What do all these positions boil down to? Government: who governs the city, what they do, and how they’re chosen. Unlike in a modern game setting, we can’t just look up Meadowbrook in an atlas or city website to determine what governmental structure it has. We’re going have to come up with it on our own.Since Meadowbrook’s world is based on medieval Europe, we can use history to help shape our town’s government.

It would be highly unusual for a medieval town to not have a mayor and a town council, so that gives us our first two government offices.

Mayor

Let’s make the mayor an elected office — majority vote from among the town’s adult citizenry. It’s a form of government most players and GMs can relate to. We could have two mayors — one for the halfling quarter (let’s call it “Littletun”) and one for the human quarter (we’ll call that “Bigtun”) — but I feel there should be a single office for final decisions, a “buck stops here” position. But we could have two “submayors” — let’s call them magistrates – one for each quarter, who report directly to the mayor. Since the town’s population is split nearly 50-50 human- halfling, we can have the mayor’s office change hands periodically, say every two years, between the Littletun magistrate and the Bigtun magistrate. The “promoted” magistrate would have an assistant (his deputy magistrate) to take over his magisterial duties while he serves as the town’s mayor.

Town Council

Most towns were built on commerce, meaning that merchant and craft guilds often strongly influenced, if not outright controlled, the town’s government. Since we’ve already determined that our town is a trade city, that will work well for Meadowbrook. The town council, then, could be made up of the town’s most influential guild masters and split between the merchant guilds and the craft guilds. We could split these up between Littletun guilds and Bigtun guilds, but I’d like more integration than that — guild membership will be based purely on ability (and, probably, politics). So let’s state that guildmasters are the most senior member of their respective guilds, whether they’re human, halfling, gnome or whatever.

Below the town council will be the guildmasters, who have responsibility for maintaining and policing their guild members. Not everyone in Meadowbrook would necessarily be in a guild, but in a town ruled by the guilds, it wouldn’t be too far fetched for guild members to be the only people with a voice in the city’s government and policies.

Guilds could have their own courts for trying and punishing guild members who broke city and guild laws. Those not members of any guild would then have to appear before the town council (and any interested citizens), who would determine punishment (usually fines). Serious offenses by guild members could be escalated to the town council for determination, at which point the accused’s guild will provide legal council; non-guild members would either have to hire a guild counselor or do without.

So far, our town government consists of:

• Mayor
• Magistrates
• Deputy Magistrates
• Town Council
• Guild leaders

This gives us a good overview of our town’s political structure. Obviously, we haven’t determined any details yet (like who is the mayor), but we’ll flesh that out as we go along. Since the guilds form the basis of our town government, we’re going to need to determine what guilds exist in this town and to do that, we need to determine what businesses Meadowbrook has.

Tomorrow: businesses

Sources for medieval town government:

• Britan Express. Medieval England – daily life in medieval towns.
• Gies, Frances and Joseph. Life in a Medieval Village. Harper & Row: New York, ©1990.
• Knox, E.L. Skip. Medieval Society: Towns.

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City Creation: Government is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

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

City Creation: Mood, Theme is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

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

City Creation: Name, Pop. is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle