Regardless, there should be some issue that the church finds important that you can use to sow tension into the setting and even provide quests for the players. Temples can also be places of intrigue in their own right depending on how devout the citizens are and how the clergy interact with local politics. RELATED: Dungeons & Dragons: 10 Best Warlock Sub-Classes to Play As The higher ranked members of the temple are likely clerics or other divine classes that can cast a few beneficial spells for the players - if you want your town to have a source for the healing potion addiction your players are feeding, this is the ideal spot for that. The temple will have clergy who work there, flavored by the god or pantheon they worship - a god of strength might have brawny extroverted priests that are one step away from starting their own gym, while a god of knowledge might have a temple akin to a public library. The temple is where townsfolk go to pray, gain a sense of community and receive a smug sense of superiority over others.
If implemented in D&D, carters can attract the players as they sell exotic goods, make requests for items or accompany the cart on escort quests into dangerous lands. Carters gather the town's goods, caravan them to the next town and then trade for the items the hometown needs. A business the entire party might be interested in might need the medieval truckers known as carters. The longer the PCs stay in the starting town, the more they will shape and invest in its economy. This means some shops should be tailored to their needs: offering arms and armor at the blacksmith or leathersmith, spell scrolls and magic identification from a wizard's tower or simple resupplies like a trader's post or general store. Most towns will have several shops so make sure you include at least one or two that your players will specifically want to visit.
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In many settings, taverns are the known hangouts of professional explorers, travelers and monster hunters, so any NPCs with dirty work to get done might show up too. There should be an owner (usually a family), a few employees and something that allows the player characters (PCs) to interact with the locals (like a game, music or fighting pit) to help get them invested. This is the place the PCs will be getting the most facetime with the townsfolk, and the more invested they are, the more they will care when they need to save the Mayor's son from kobolds or whatever later on. The tavern can simply be where the heroes heal after a long day's adventuring but because the entire town presumably drinks here it can also be center stage for story development, picking up quests and even fighting combats.Ī good tavern should represent the core of the town's community and between the food, drink, decor and patrons, the players should be able to infer a lot about what's going on in the game world. Also known as the public house (or the inn if the place has beds), the tavern is a space for the player characters to get sloshed and take long rests while they are in town. The tavern is an incredibly useful local landmark you'll want to include in any town. RELATED: Dungeons & Dragons: Four Trap Styles to Challenge Your Players Even if you have ideas for an entire world, building a town and working your way out from there is a great way to start.
This isn't to say your campaign's starting area can't be whatever size you like, just that a bigger city has drawbacks, including decision paralysis, while smaller hamlets and villages don't lend themselves as well to narrative or intrigue. One good way to keep the scope of your game manageable for you and your players, especially as it begins, is to start small and grow from there.
Towns are big enough to be interesting but small enough to have lots of problems that lower level heroes are well-suited to solve. Here are the essential landmarks and structures you'll want to include as you homebrew your very own first town. A good first town is a place between the action where your players can rest in (relative) peace, buy things with their hard earned treasure and find quests to get them into more adventures. All Dungeons & Dragons adventures need to start somewhere, and if you are a Game Master creating connected adventures in a consistent world (known as a campaign) that somewhere is often the humble first town.