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CrazyCrab
2016-09-18, 04:59 PM
Hi everyone,
I've been experiment with settings and worlds recently, checking out other people's stuff and I've come to the conclusion that most epic fantasy games, books and, most importantly, campaigns heavily rely on travelling huge distances. The Lord of the Rings, Mass Effect, Avatar the Last Airbender, Pokemon, heck most of the games in my Steam library are either open world or have a huge world. Even something based on playing in separate locations like Hitman makes you travel all around the globe.

So, I've been wondering, can you have a massive campaign that takes place in a small city? Let's just say a place where you travel from one end to the other in an hour, instead of months. Let's say there are like three shops in the whole game. there are maybe 1000-2000 people alive. That's it, as the city is in the middle of nowhere, like here = https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Kotzebue,+AK+99752,+USA/@66.8487657,-162.8657914,8.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x50cd16e62470ba35:0x4e402d9312ad1 bb5!8m2!3d66.8982899!4d-162.596283

I wanted to experiment with a game like this, where you run into the same NPCs all the time, getting to know them better. Where you have an actual 'google map' map of the city and you can check every single house, one by one. With most of the city abandoned, each house is a potential adventure. A 15 minute walk can be just as eventful as a day of travel, seeing how it is usually reduced to 'nothing interesting happens, outside 'insert silly anecdote here'. Would you like to set up a watch for the night?' Every new face is exciting, a single tourist can be a sidequest.
Yeah, maybe the scale of the events will be smaller, but it does not necessarily have to be - in my initial idea, the whole city has been 'fabricated' to mask a bunch of secret facilities, starting with minor events and quests, slowly evolving into massive world shaking events. All without moving more than a mile or two.

So, what do you think? Any luck running campaigns like this? Do you enjoy the constant change of scenery, of do you feel like playing in a tiny location could be fun?

Fri
2016-09-19, 07:08 AM
yes it works.

Though depend on what you mean by "epic."

But anyway, I once had a campaign where the players play as fantasy town guards in a newly made special force team (think SWAT). It revolves just around the town, investigating crimes and dealing with threats that normal town guards can't handle. It was a pretty fun game.

Planescape Torment also mostly revolve around one town, Sigil, though to be fair, Sigil is the City of Doors where various portals lead from there to all kind of places in the multiverse, but they always move back to the city.

Darth Ultron
2016-09-19, 07:48 AM
No, traveling is not essential. It's common, but not essential.

And ''Epic'' story can take place in just a city...or even just a room. The TV show Babylon 5 is a good example of a ''city'' where all the epic adventure comes there, as is Star Trek DS9.

If you think Star Wars is ''Epic'' note that they can travel anywhere in the universe in a couple minutes.

Contrast
2016-09-19, 07:50 AM
I would say that the main reason 'epic' games involve a lot of travel is that the general conceit for such games is 'There is a problem, fix the problem'. The obvious problem if you have the setting in a small area is...why haven't the PCs or someone else just gone and solved the problem? The usual explanation authors/DMs come up with is to say 'Ah you need XYZ, which isn't here its over there'.

If Mount Doom was in the Shire then its usually a lot harder to explain why it took them 3 books to get there while keeping in interesting and varied for the reader(/players). That's not to say it can't be done. One method would be to have the adventure come to the party (say, there is a portal in/near the town per the Planescape example already given or there is an entrance to a magic dungeon nearby or etc.).

If you have a combat orientated game it can be a problem if the enemy is too close at hand (yes narritavely it makes sense to go and stop him now but he's still 5 levels higher than you so go on a quest over here to do Thing A before you do so you have a chance to level up first) so having them (or the MacGuffin needed to fight them) in a far off place can be helpful. In a more socially orientated campaign it could be much more viable to have your setting be more compact (you could probably play a whole capaign which covered the course of a single royal wedding/banquet and the wheelings and dealings associated with it if you wanted to).

I haven't read all of them but at least some of the Locke Lamora stories by Scott Lynch are an example of a story which could be a campaign set in a single city.

Edit - additionally, the vast majority of the Harry Potter series takes place in a single location. If you're familiar with the Warhammer 40k fluff, you could easily do an entire Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader campaign on a single space station or hulk as well.

Keltest
2016-09-19, 08:00 AM
Traveling allows for events to happen in between starting and reaching the objective. 'its not the end, its the journey" and all that. In a more meta sense, it allows for multiple threats that need to be dealt with without having them all be overwhelming for being concentrated in the same place at once. Imagine if Aragorn had to fight all his battles in Bree. There would be nothing left of the place by the end of Fellowship.

Knaight
2016-09-19, 09:45 AM
I've run plenty of campaigns in and around individual cities - 2000 people is a bit on the low end for that, but it's entirely doable. Whether epic campaigns are doable depends on how exactly the term "epic" is being defined.

Jay R
2016-09-19, 11:41 AM
The basic campaign involves a long series of encounters.

Either the PCs are traveling to them, or they are traveling to the PCs.

It's easier to do it the first way, but I see no inherent reason it can't happen the second way instead.

JeenLeen
2016-09-19, 12:22 PM
I agree with others that it can work, but I think you need to answer a few questions to make sure it doesn't implode:
1. if there is a Big Bad, why doesn't he kill the PCs who are nearby him / what prevents the PCs from facing him before they are strong enough to? (Don't trust PC common sense for the latter)
2. if epic = powerful, how do mid-to-late game events not destroy the town? (this assumes you want the setting to persist)
3. what happens it he PCs start slaughtering a relevant percentage of the populace (even if not the majority)?
I think this would work best in a system where money isn't that important (5e D&D, World of Darkness, etc.) than one like 3.5, but if not, ask:
4. how do you keep PCs from stealing high-level stuff before they can afford it -OR- how do shops get increasing supply as PCs can afford greater gear?
and, probably the biggest question,
5. what do you mean by epic?

Some ideas I can think of are a town with a dungeon underneath it (like the game Diablo) or some mysterious tower in the middle of it. I think some real old console PC games I played were based off D&D adventures where the players were investigating the dungeons under/in a city.
Another idea could be a cursed town where it's not possible to leave. Folk can come, but can't leave. If you die, you respawn the next morning as a semi-undead. People outside the city consider it a deathtrap/mysterious ruin. I've thought of a campaign there where this happens to a town, and the town is now (after a couple centuries) divided into 3-5 factions, each trying to solve the mystery but fighting against each other. PCs are some adventurers who decide to delve the ruins of the city, and now they find themselves trapped and in between the warring factions.

JAL_1138
2016-09-19, 01:11 PM
2000 people is more of a town than a city.

That's not purely pedantry--it can affect a fair bit about the society, economics, relative position in importance within the realm, architecture, building layout, population demographics, occupational demographics, military & defenses, and even model of government, nature of surrounding countryside, etc.

You may want to figure up the relative development level/ time period and general setting similarities and distinctions compared to real-world history and look at some historical sources.

Then figure up why the place would be "mostly abandoned," as functional structures on or near arable land and especially near both a bay and open water were rarely abandoned in, say, the Middle Ages or Renaissance unless in a war zone, in the (immediate) aftermath of plague (though after the plague has been gone a while, civilizations can potentially bounce back stronger than before, as in post-Black Death Europe), in the aftermath of economic collapse, or in the aftermath of environmental catastrophe (whether sudden and dramatic like volcanic eruption or earthquake, or slow and subtle like soil exhaustion, fishery depletion, or decade of drought). Somebody would take and hold it eventually--as long as it was viable to do so.

The other thing to figure out is, where does the food come from? A town or city cannot exist independently under most circumstances. It needs extensive farms not far outside the city proper, unless it has a magical method of food production (not impossible in many RPGs) or a constant stream of traders (with means to somehow preserve food for the travel).

Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm) could be a good place to start. It even has links to some useful kingdom-demographics-generator tools.

CrazyCrab
2016-09-19, 06:22 PM
Thanks for all the answers so far, everyone! I really appreciate it. Some really good food for thought here.


I agree with others that it can work, but I think you need to answer a few questions to make sure it doesn't implode:
1. if there is a Big Bad, why doesn't he kill the PCs who are nearby him / what prevents the PCs from facing him before they are strong enough to? (Don't trust PC common sense for the latter)
2. if epic = powerful, how do mid-to-late game events not destroy the town? (this assumes you want the setting to persist)
3. what happens it he PCs start slaughtering a relevant percentage of the populace (even if not the majority)?
I think this would work best in a system where money isn't that important (5e D&D, World of Darkness, etc.) than one like 3.5, but if not, ask:
4. how do you keep PCs from stealing high-level stuff before they can afford it -OR- how do shops get increasing supply as PCs can afford greater gear?
and, probably the biggest question,
5. what do you mean by epic?


I figured I may as well go over these questions 'in public', so maybe you can give me some tips on integrating all these elements and getting it just right.

1. There is a number of enemies, allies, and possible either of them. I'll be working with a factions system, so i don't really know who the main guys will be. The 'Big Bad' is going to be quite a reveal, but he can also be the Big Good guy... it really depends on their choices. I want to make this a campaign where choices really do matter.

2. They already have, at least most of it. It's a somewhat 'post apocalyptic' (even though nobody remembers the apocalypse setting. It's been so many years that nobody's witnessed it first hand, or its effects. It's like a new, sparsely populated and filled with ruins, world.

3. They can do that, sure. Will be tough though, as the populace is pretty strong (All the 'commoners' are at least level 1... you have to be tough to survive in a world like this) and the factions will have something to say about it. Also, you cannot die. Once you die, you fight your inner demons, lose some sanity, lose a body part or two. If you lose your mind, you become a weird planar creature. Those don't die, they just temporarily dissipate.

4. I'm not going to. If they can do it, sure. I highly doubt that they will, but I don't think a rare item or two will break the game early on... I do like to reward a plan well executed. Very rare and legendary items aren't for sale, at least most of the time.

5. I plan to run this for a long time, starting at level 1 all the way to double digits. Starting with small issues and events, ending with Earth-shattering decisions. Will probably take a year or more, given that we play once a week. I really hope they won't get bored with the setting too quickly.

Fri
2016-09-19, 10:00 PM
Also, I remember one of my favourite game I've played.

It's a high lethality game where everyone could die with random bad roll, and that's part of the charm (usually I play less lethal games). The premise is that we're all adventurers in a frontier town/fortress at the very edge of a kingdom, the border of civilization, and we're tasked to do missions on the frontier, like investigating bugbear movement, finding rare plants for mage guild representative, etc, but after every missions we'd go back to the fortress to lick our wound and mourn our dead. We never travel more than a few days from the fortress (technically we could, but it'd be too dangerous).

Obviously it's not really "epic" since we're rather low to mid level, but it's tense and fun. You could easily add a "big bad" there somewhere, like there's actually an evil overlord gathering force secretly, that's the reason for the weird bugbear movement that you scouted (but it's still gathering force, that's why it's not attacking yet). Or an ancient necromancer is actually buried in a hidden dungeon nearby, and it's waking up, that's why the frontier is getting more dangerous recently.

Slipperychicken
2016-09-19, 10:55 PM
I feel certain that if I were to flesh out a single settlement in such extensive detail, the very first decision my players make would be to leave the city and never look back. Not even because I think they hate me, but just because of Murphy's Law and its application to players. If I make an assumption in my planning, they will find a way to violate it. They seem attracted like magnets toward decisions and locations that I did not prepare to adjudicate.

Fri
2016-09-19, 11:07 PM
that's why of course you mention the premise of the game first.

Like, in the game example I provided earlier, that's mentioned firsthand as the premise.

"This is a high-lethality game where random bad roll can kill you(important to be mentioned first), where you play as adventurers doing odd job in a frontier town and defending a border fortress that act as your base."

The premise had been mentioned. If they don't like the premise, they don't have to join (because a lot of players already like the premise and want to play in that game). Some people asked "can we leave the fortress?" and the answer is "sure, but it's the border of civilized land. The further you go from the frontier the more dangerous it is, so most likely you'll die against some high level monster. If you go toward the civilized land, sorry, but the premise of this game is about defending this fortress town, going toward the big cities are basically considered retiring your character from the campaign. They might still alive and do some other adventures out there, but this campaign is about this one place."

Efrate
2016-09-19, 11:09 PM
I can see it kind of working, but my biggest issue as a player would be what am I doing here and why. For a non-dnd game, thats not so combat focused but more investigative in nature, I think it can work splendidly. For a combat focused system, why are all the battle in said little town, and how can one small area hold so many competing baddies.

If its all humans/elves/whathaveyou it can work, but why are the lvl 10 guys not doing anything active to stop the PCs in such a small location once they get wind of their movement. If there are other lvl 10 guys holding the first group off, why aren't they doing something about this issue as opposed to a few farmboys with pointy sticks fixing things. If all these level 10 guys are always fighting, keeping each other in check, what business or hope do said greenhorns have to do anything relevant.

How can your PCs be the heroes, or at least plot relevant? If everyone is out to get them, how do they survive? These type of questions mean a lot. A town with say extensive catacombs which lead to other areas but all connected deep underground? OK sure, but that is not really the feel you seem to be going for, that is just a dungeon hub; not a self contained locale in which to have your adventure.

JeenLeen
2016-09-20, 09:28 AM
Thanks for all the answers so far, everyone! I really appreciate it. Some really good food for thought here.



I figured I may as well go over these questions 'in public', so maybe you can give me some tips on integrating all these elements and getting it just right.

1. There is a number of enemies, allies, and possible either of them. I'll be working with a factions system, so i don't really know who the main guys will be. The 'Big Bad' is going to be quite a reveal, but he can also be the Big Good guy... it really depends on their choices. I want to make this a campaign where choices really do matter.

2. They already have, at least most of it. It's a somewhat 'post apocalyptic' (even though nobody remembers the apocalypse setting. It's been so many years that nobody's witnessed it first hand, or its effects. It's like a new, sparsely populated and filled with ruins, world.

3. They can do that, sure. Will be tough though, as the populace is pretty strong (All the 'commoners' are at least level 1... you have to be tough to survive in a world like this) and the factions will have something to say about it. Also, you cannot die. Once you die, you fight your inner demons, lose some sanity, lose a body part or two. If you lose your mind, you become a weird planar creature. Those don't die, they just temporarily dissipate.

4. I'm not going to. If they can do it, sure. I highly doubt that they will, but I don't think a rare item or two will break the game early on... I do like to reward a plan well executed. Very rare and legendary items aren't for sale, at least most of the time.

5. I plan to run this for a long time, starting at level 1 all the way to double digits. Starting with small issues and events, ending with Earth-shattering decisions. Will probably take a year or more, given that we play once a week. I really hope they won't get bored with the setting too quickly.

I think those sound like good answers, and this sounds like a good setting for one city. (Not all settings are.)
From the Murphy's Law: make sure your players know, and are cool with, staying in the town. Players should design characters that work with the premise of the game.

In general, I think as long as the players know the expectations and what is and isn't 'cool', it should go well. I could even see sharing all of the above, expect answer 1 since that gives away some spoilers, as these are ways the game varies from a standard game (assuming D&D).

---

For a while, I thought of programming a 'random city generator' for an Exalted game, so that it would spit out a population. From that, I would see if there were any hidden Solars, how many Dragonblooded, cultists of what cults, etc., to find threats for the PCs. For a single town that's the focus of the game, you probably want to design everyone, but I felt like sharing that concept might help in a tangential way.

Reboot
2016-09-20, 08:04 PM
Another idea could be a cursed town where it's not possible to leave. Folk can come, but can't leave. If you die, you respawn the next morning as a semi-undead. People outside the city consider it a deathtrap/mysterious ruin. I've thought of a campaign there where this happens to a town, and the town is now (after a couple centuries) divided into 3-5 factions, each trying to solve the mystery but fighting against each other. PCs are some adventurers who decide to delve the ruins of the city, and now they find themselves trapped and in between the warring factions.

That gave me the thought of the "town" being a prison, completely isolated from the outside world (with a magical font of food and drink)... generations later, where all the original prisoners have died off without being released for reasons no-one-knows-why, and you have this society that's grown up with no knowledge of the outside world beyond some old stories.

[And then some amnesiacs - the PCs - appear, or something like that.]

Kami2awa
2016-09-21, 01:27 AM
Epic need not mean epic-level. Epic level campaigns are generally intended to extend over large distances, but by this level the PCs need not travel in the sense of marching across country. They can teleport, fly, summon a dragon to carry them, and so on.

I don't have a good definition of epic fantasy. But few epic fantasies are actually epic-level in the D&D sense. One recent work which I think fits the bill for epic fantasy set principly in one location is Harry Potter. Certainly there are trips to other parts of the world but the vast majority of the story is set in one huge castle, with a great many secrets to discover. I think the latter part may be key for maintaining interest - a town that you know every inch of already is not as interesting as one with mysterious dungeons underneath, unexplored abandoned areas, and so on.

Confining your action to one "set" as it were allows for a lot of world-building off screen. In HP we hear of magical Egyptian tombs, giants in the north of the UK, and the terrible prison Azkaban (note the main characters never actually visit it). This creates a sense of a world beyond the characters and even the story as a whole.

Lord Raziere
2016-09-21, 02:51 AM
.....well it depends I guess on the location.

If your not traveling in your epic campaign, that means you are at one location. If its one location, that must mean its pretty important for all this epic stuff to take place there and only there. This is generally a city. and generally an important one.

But even then, all your really doing is making the city your map. Cities have districts and different areas to them with their different flavors and purposes, and if your a brave hero out to face danger, that means these epic threats are occupying the cities streets. Which means there are territorial disputes, and gangs, mafias, corruption going all the way to the top, places where some people go rather than others, ghettoes, malls, shopping districts, factories, the works.

and well, it soon becomes clear that WITHIN the society....there are still different locations. that you must travel TO, within the ONE location you supposedly occupy, when really each district is a location within a location, and each building is a location within a district, and thus a location within a location within a location.

The whole "traveling" thing therefore is fractal, to be honest. Even if you try to make a campaign take place in a single room, taking a few steps technically counts as traveling, and you have to detail the whole room and all the interesting parts of it that your taking a few steps to. All your doing is deciding what the campaigns flavor is, so all you'd get is an epic urban fantasy game where you have to travel to different parts of the same city. "I journey for weeks to Mt. Zalumbra" and "I walk a few minutes over to the coffee shop" is roleplaying wise, the same action, its just harder to make the second sentence sound epic.

Garimeth
2016-09-21, 08:03 AM
that's why of course you mention the premise of the game first.

Like, in the game example I provided earlier, that's mentioned firsthand as the premise.

"This is a high-lethality game where random bad roll can kill you(important to be mentioned first), where you play as adventurers doing odd job in a frontier town and defending a border fortress that act as your base."

The premise had been mentioned. If they don't like the premise, they don't have to join (because a lot of players already like the premise and want to play in that game). Some people asked "can we leave the fortress?" and the answer is "sure, but it's the border of civilized land. The further you go from the frontier the more dangerous it is, so most likely you'll die against some high level monster. If you go toward the civilized land, sorry, but the premise of this game is about defending this fortress town, going toward the big cities are basically considered retiring your character from the campaign. They might still alive and do some other adventures out there, but this campaign is about this one place."

I like this. My group is currently in the waning hours of a more traditional "epic" world-saving quest. The next one is going to be a "Wither"-esque monster hunter frontier town campaign, with everybody having a day job in the town that they do when there are no baddies to deal with.

What are some of the quests your group got sent on if you don't mind my asking?

Aliquid
2016-09-21, 11:01 AM
in regards to the question:
If there are increasingly challenging encounters throughout the campaign, and the PCs aren't moving... then what is stopping the higher challenges from crushing the PCs earlier on in the game?

You could address this by having other NPCs in the town dealing with it, and as the PCs "climb the ranks", they take on bigger and bigger challenges. Make sure you introduce the PCs to the powerful NPCs... and maybe at some point witness higher level NPCs being "killed off". This way it is clear that they aren't the only adventurers in this world... but the "epic" thing is that they will be the only ones that survive long enough to reach the higher levels.


And in regards to dying, I love your idea of having death a non-issue, and it is cool how you have addressed it. I have a couple campaigns in my head that also make death a temporary inconvenience.

Something I want to do in my campaigns to showcase this to the players and still have them 'fear' dying, is arrange a TPK scenario reasonably early in the game. They all die, but recover after a bit of time... only to find their bodies stripped of all possessions. That should show them that "cool I can't permanently die" but at the same time "oh crap, I like my magic items, I don't want them stolen from my corpse as I wait for my regeneration"

Fri
2016-09-21, 12:13 PM
I like this. My group is currently in the waning hours of a more traditional "epic" world-saving quest. The next one is going to be a "Wither"-esque monster hunter frontier town campaign, with everybody having a day job in the town that they do when there are no baddies to deal with.

What are some of the quests your group got sent on if you don't mind my asking?

It's a long time ago so I forgot the details, but if I remember correctly, it's mostly scouting movement of local monster race, collecting rare ingredients for the mage guild, mapmaking (basically "go to this uncharted place and see what's here, or go to this forest and see what's in it. I think we might've found some dangerous ancient ruins), checking rumours, finding some specific artifact that someone from the city want, helping mage guild research stuffs, saving locals who got caught by slavers, killing specific beast or monster that annoy people and what else I wonder.

Those can be mixed and matched, and we didn't actually play the campaign to the end, but I remember my friend said that, hearing from my stories, it could easily be culminated in some epic fortress defense, where whether we're successful or not on this final mission, the campaign would end (if we success, the fortress keep standing and in the future it might become some important place/we become legends, if the fortress defense fails, well, people dies and everyone would leave the town, and it might still become legends, like roanoke colony or hadrian wall).

the_david
2016-09-21, 12:54 PM
I did some math using suggestions from Medieval Demographics Made Easy and a town with a population of 2000 should have a diameter of 451 yards. That's not nearly a one hour walk, it's more like 5 minutes. If you want to walk from one side of town to the other in an hour, it should be about a 3 mile walk. That's a 7 square mile town with a population of 274614. That's assuming you walk on a straight road straight through a circular "town" so you probably need to bring those numbers down a little.

Now you did mention the empty houses, so I suppose you could go the Barovia way and actually have most of the houses empty. You also mentioned that there is nothing of interest around the town. If so, how would you keep a population of 2000 fed?

Kami2awa
2016-09-21, 04:12 PM
You also mentioned that there is nothing of interest around the town. If so, how would you keep a population of 2000 fed?

2000 acres of encounter-free farmer's fields is not very interesting to the average PC.

Aliquid
2016-09-21, 04:13 PM
You also mentioned that there is nothing of interest around the town. If so, how would you keep a population of 2000 fed?Maybe the farms are really boring and are "nothing of interest" as far as gameplay is concerned.

CrazyCrab
2016-09-21, 06:02 PM
Hmm, thanks for all the feedback. If that's the case I may end up making the original city bigger, but keep the current population much smaller.

Fri
2016-09-21, 09:33 PM
Well, the main "town" could be relatively small, but a lot, if not most people lives in various farmshold, cattle farm, mill on top of the hill, monastery, around the town, but is still considered as part of the "town" by the townsfolk.

Slipperychicken
2016-09-22, 06:46 PM
Maybe the farms are really boring and are "nothing of interest" as far as gameplay is concerned.

You could totally have a few quests among the farmers. There's could be old abandoned buildings containing potential encounters and treasure. Enterprising PCs might also arrange to buy rations and animal-feed directly from the farmers for a discount.

Pugwampy
2016-09-23, 04:59 AM
Yes of course you can enjoy a campaign using one hub town and one giant dungeon . Heck thats two campaigns right there . If players get bored with same ol same ol environment by all means pack and leave to the next city or country . You can squeeze quite a few sessions from that ox wagon trip .

Mechalich
2016-09-23, 05:18 AM
Generally 'epic' storytelling involves the story characters enacting changes that are significant for some large population (ie. 'the masses') who aren't active participants in the story. So regardless of whether they travel from place to place, the characters need to be able to project power beyond their immediate location and their actions should have far-reaching consequences.

Characters whose actions have vast influence on one town that isn't particularly different from any other towns aren't generally enacting anything epic, because the king could send in the army and landscape that town the next day if he really wanted to.

On the other hand, if the characters are the only ones able to face down some sort of vast supernatural threat in the making that would eventually expand to swallow the world, they can face that threat without ever moving (and if they're Japanese, usually without leaving high school).