Tag Archives: GM tools

City Creation: Buisness Demographics

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: Businesses

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: Government

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:

Technorati Profile

City Creation: Mood, Theme

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: Name, Pop.

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

Location Worksheet

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.

Campaign Worksheet

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.

Related Articles on rpgGM.com

Enhanced by Zemanta

GM Tools: Story Worksheet

White wolf publishing introduced the idea of a story worksheet in their Vampire Storyteller’s Companion (first edition) . Basically, it’s a “quick reference” sheet that covers key details of the adventure at a glance, such as a plot summary, key NPCs and situations, any rewards for the characters should receive and the conditions for success and failure. I found this so useful for planning adventures — even whole campaigns — I’ve expanded on it and adapted it to all of my other games. Using these sheets helps me focus on the important points of a story and not get lost in the details.

Any GM will want to tailor these sheets to fit their own gaming style and world. I use separate campaign and adventure sheets, as well as a quick-reference sheet for important locations. Frequently, I don’t need anything more detailed than these to run a game, but I’m a very “off-the-cuff” GM.

Here’s what my adventure/”story” sheets cover:

  • Campaign / chronicle name
  • Story name
  • Geographical setting — where does this adventure take place geographically?
  • Start date (real time)
  • Start date (game time)
  • PCs involved — since I frequently reuse entire campaigns, this helps me remember which campaign I’m currently running.
  • Adventure concept —  a one to two sentence summary of the adventure. This helps me clarify the adventure so I don’t get bogged down in  subplots. Example: PCs are hired by the local king to eliminate the dragon terrorizing the local farms.
  • Plot archetypes — is this a “bug-hunt” (like the example above), a rescue, a “baby-sitting” (ex: guard the prince while he travels through Lupine territory on the way to an important meeting), a murder-mystery, etc?
  • Plot summary — a short paragraph detailing the beginning, middle, and possible outcomes of the adventure.
  • Theme — another inspiration from White Wolf. My theme is an open-ended question or phrase I’d like the story to explore. Ex: Trust — who can you trust, how do you know you can trust someone and what do you do when you can’t trust anyone?
  • Mood — what overall mood I want the adventure to have.
  • Subplots — these are subplots I want to make sure I touch on in this adventure.
  • Key NPCs
  • Key Locations
  • Key Situations
  • Adventure opening — how do you get the players involved in this story, where does it take place, and who are the key NPCs the PCs need to encounter
  • Adventure outcome — what are the most likely outcomes (I find this useful, even though my players will inevitably find something that never even crossed my mind), where is the final scene likely to take place, and the NPCs key to the outcome of this adventure
  • Midpoints — a list of the crucial points of the adventure. This is a list of events that need to take place during the adventure, along with their locations and key NPCs
  • Rewards and the conditions for gaining them
  • Game summary questions:
    • Who are the characters involved?
    • What do they need to do?
    • When do they need to do it and how long do they have to do it in?
    • Where do they need to do it?
    • Why do they need to do it?
    • How are they likely to accomplish it?
  • Plot outline
  • Summary — a brief summary of what really did happen in the adventure.

Next time: Adventure / Chronicle Worksheet

Related Posts on rpgGM.com:

Enhanced by Zemanta