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View Full Version : DM Help Fun Things to Do in a Small Fantasy City?



Dr paradox
2021-08-07, 06:50 PM
Heya,

My 5e D&D players are gonna be spending about a day killing time waiting for their target to appear at a party being held at a temple. They've already secured their invitations, all that's left to do is wait, which grants them a rare opportunity to just take in the local color of a culture in the setting they haven't become particularly familiar with.

The place is kind of a Khazar Crete - an island in an inland sea which has become absorbed into the cultural realm of a central-Asian kind of kingdom. Camels are a prized animal, fermented horse milk is a common alcoholic beverages, and the city is presently overburdened with travelers and merchants taking shelter from a ravening pirate fleet. The city itself is pretty small, as these things go, maybe 10,000 - 12,000 people.

Does anyone have ideas for vignettes, local events, entertainments, or diversions? Whether specifically appropriate to this city or not, no such thing as a bad idea!

Trask
2021-08-08, 08:49 PM
I have a table of random encounters/events on my table that I use for the main city of my campaign. I'll share a few. I make sure that they are at least entertaining, but if I've done well then I've found some way to make it interesting and more importantly, slip in relevant NPCs or tie in whatever other loose threads are hanging around the PC's adventures.

1. The clash of cymbals and drums resounds down the street accompanied by the blare of horns. White-robed clerics swinging incense burners lead a procession along the main street towards the temple. Next come the musicians and a detachment of town guards, mail polished and glittering. A large white and gold palanquin held aloft by eight bearers sways down the street. Sitting in the palanquin and smiling warmly at the people is <insert powerful cleric of the city here>.

2. You are walking down the crowded street when an aged woman limping in front of your stumbled and falls into the street, right in the path of a runaway cart. Should one of the PCs leap to her aid, she will reveal that she is a fortune teller and reward the PC by offering to read their fortune. At your discretion, she might be a member of the local thieves guild trying to use the PCs fortune to cheat them, or she might be hired by one of the PC's old enemies to lure them into a trap. Or she might be a legitimate fortune teller who drops hints and clues about future events in the campaign.

3. A crazy disheveled man approaches the PCs on the street. He has a impressively large dog which he leads on a piece of string. The man claims he was once an adventurer, but following a bite from a giant rat that got infected and never healed right he now sleeps rough around town. He fears (incorrectly) that he is going to die soon and wishes to find a good home for his dog. He will do his utmost, even to tears, to persuade the party to take the dog and look after it. If they agree, they get a trained mastiff with 9 hit points.

4. The PCs become aware of being followed by a grimy character <insert stat block as approach to your party's level>. If they approach him, he disappears into the crowd, hut picks up their trail again later. The thief makes no attempt to rob them but watches where they go. If the PCs deposit their wealth anywhere, he takes no more interest in them. Should they take it with them to an inn, the thief reports to the thieves' guild and a robbery attempt will be made by a gang of thugs at some time when they are most vulnerable.

5. 1st Occasion: At any convenient location, one of the characters (chosen at random) is approached by a pitiable, small urchin who holds out an empty bowl and asks for "a few copper pieces". If any of the adventurers give him anything, they are immediately surrounded by a further 2d10 small children, all clamoring for money. The children follow the characters - dancing round them and getting in their way - until either given some more money, or chased off.

2nd Occasion: The event starts as above, but whether the PCs give the first urchin anything or not, they are soon surrounded by hordes of children. This time however, there are three thieves' guild members in training in their midst (spy stat block), who use the general jostling as a cover for picking the pockets of as many of the party as possible (they have advantage on the attempt and the party has disadvantage on their passive perception).

6. While walking along any side street, the party is unfortunate enough to pass beneath an upper story window just as an elderly woman is emptying the contents of her chamber pot onto the street below. Characters who fail a Dexterity saving throw (DC 10) smell so badly until they next bathe, that all Charisma checks are made with disadvantage.

7.A large, heavy cart comes trundling past the PCs, the driver lashing his horses to greater efforts and the whole vehicle swaying violently from side to side. The driver either fails to see, or decides to ignore the muddy patch dead ahead, and plows straight through it. Characters with a passive perception of 15 or better see the muddy patch just in time to get out of the way, but not enough time to warn anybody else. Characters who don't see the muddy patch must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or be sprayed from head to toe with mud, until they next bathe, that all Charisma checks are made with disadvantage (lots of chances to get dirty in a city).

8. The PC's are caught up by a crowd of townsfolk running in the opposite direction from them. Amid the general chaos and screams, the PCs hear enough intelligible phrases to be able to work out that a wild animal is on the loose. The creature is a dancer bear which had been entertaining crowds near the market. It is currently wreaking havoc in the marketplace and no-one knows where the owner is (he is drunk and busy with a 'lady of the night' in a nearby tavern). The bear is not overly aggressive and will happily take any food offered. If the PCs kill the bear and he finds out, he will be enraged and demand 500 gp as compensation. If the PCs capture and return the bear, the owner will reward them with simple but elegant golden ring worth 100 gp, but the owner doesn't realize the ring is magical (you decide the effects), if he ever figures this out, he will demand his ring back, if refused he will attempt to buy it back (going no higher than 200 gp). If this doesn't work, he hires the local thieves' guild to steal it back (maybe ties into encounters 4 and 5).

9. As the PCs are passing the open door of an inn, a drunk but rich and influential local merchant comes rushing out and bumps into one of the PCs (chosen at random). At first, the man is very apologetic, but then starts patting his pockets as thought looking for something. Suddenly, his friendly smile turns ugly as he cries, "You thief! You've stolen my money! Hand it over before I call the guard!" The man's money was actually stolen inside, by a buxom barmaid who was sitting on his lap and is hiding the filched coins in her apron. Unless pacified quickly, he calls for the guard. (This could be a good opportunity to introduce or bring back a guard NPC that the players are familiar with.)

10. As the party approached a busy intersection, there is a minor collision between a large wagon carrying barrels and a procession of street entertainers (jugglers, acrobats, fire-breathers, etc.). Thanks to the large crowd, neither side can back up with ease and an argument has broken out. Tempers are frayed and by the time the PCs are close enough to see what is going on, the argument has become a fight. The crowd breaks into a free-for-all and two of the PCs (chosen at random) find themselves under attack by commoners, and outnumbered 3 to 1. For this encounter, at the start of each turn a PC must succeed on a DC 10 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone by the shoving crowd. Four guard patrols will arrive on the scene in d10+6 rounds and attempt to arrest as many combatants as possible.

vasilidor
2021-08-08, 11:12 PM
fights between locals and visitors.

do not forget magical con artist.

or regular con artist.

someone is trying to have a potato festival; fries and vodka abound.

magic potion drinking games, can enchant the player with random transformations, boons and curses ~ all temporary.

random silly cults; like cheese worshippers.

random not so silly cults.

KorvinStarmast
2021-08-09, 07:54 AM
The place is kind of a Khazar Crete - an island in an inland sea which has become absorbed into the cultural realm of a central-Asian kind of kingdom. Camels are a prized animal, fermented horse milk is a common alcoholic beverages, and the city is presently overburdened with travelers and merchants taking shelter from a ravening pirate fleet. Neat.

The city itself is pretty small, as these things go, maybe 10,000 - 12,000 people. That's a good sized city, for the assumptions that inform D&D.

Does anyone have ideas for vignettes, local events, entertainments, or diversions?
For a single afternoon and evening, here's what I suggest as some ideas that can lead to an entertaining evening.

1. Feed them some rumors about events and possible future plot hooks/adventures (I usually do packages of 5; 3 true and 2 false as a ratio).

2. Musical entertainment, at a tavern within a few blocks of where they are staying. Get some Greek or Turkish folk music and play it in the background (IRL) as you work into that scene. (This group (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAbgVdU4j8w) has put out some CD's of that style of music). Background music while we play to set the mood can sometimes really enhance a game session.

3. Local bull fights, local **** fights, local brawler arena - basically, blood sport. Betting. (Depends on your table's tastes - some folks don't care for that in their RPGs at all due to their real life aversion to that).

4. Story teller. This is a chance for a little bit of exposition so that a story teller shares a tale, or a fable, about this local land.

5. A challenge to a duel due to making a social faux pas and the noble (whom they just offended) being of a mercurial temperament. Potential for parley, battle, bribery, apology, making a connection as a result ... all kinds of stuff.

6. An old favorite: someone dumps out their chamber pot, and it either hits or nearly hits the characters.

7. Fire at the docks; do the PCs help or not? Totally up to them. Or, you can have various people running that way and asking everyone around to help.

8. Public execution: there is on a platform/stage a person bound and the axe/cleaver/sword wielding executioner is standing there while the various crimes and justifications are proclaimed by a herald. A huge crowd is gathering, and perhaps the characters see pickpockets begin to work the crowd.

9. A day at the races: camel races. Betting, and social contacts possible.

@Trask has some excellent choices. Two thumbs up.

Easy e
2021-08-09, 05:23 PM
If it is important that they get attached to the city, then by all means let them experience the "flare" of the city. If it is not important, just have them lay low, do a cut scene, and fast forward to the party.

In my mind, a good GM controls the pace of the adventure, and "waiting" is not great of pacing.

Dr paradox
2021-08-09, 09:30 PM
If it is important that they get attached to the city, then by all means let them experience the "flare" of the city. If it is not important, just have them lay low, do a cut scene, and fast forward to the party.

In my mind, a good GM controls the pace of the adventure, and "waiting" is not great of pacing.

Yeah, pretty much. The city's gonna be threatened in a week or so, so I had the party take place a day later to give the opportunity to get a feel for the place. The session was yesterday, I don't think the city has wound up leaving much of an impact, sadly - there were a couple of vignettes that they passed, but they pretty much ignored them. One player just decided to lay low in a grove at the monastery where some friends were staying, One went diving in the harbor alone and generally acted like a weird recluse, and the other two actively left the city to go walking in the fields and hills. They had a great character building conversation, but my efforts to endear the city to them were pretty much a bust.

Oh, well. At least they had a good time screwing up the party, which was a deliciously impious and extravagant affair attended by a host of boring middle-man merchants. After they fled with their abductee in tow, he called for help from his mother - an enraged Vrock that the party was actually pretty terrified of. It was a great time, but I'm still sad that they didn't take in more of the local color. It's easy for the mind's eye to slip back to standard Western European Fantasy fare, and it's a particular effort of mine to embody the thrill of travel by making places specific and new in a tangible, historical kind of way rather than upping the big-ticket fantastical elements. It's probably never going to wind up quite as memorable as something more bombastic, but it's what I like.

GarrisonsandGno
2021-08-24, 01:28 PM
Hotsprings are always a draw. Just because it's a small city doesn't mean it can't be a tourist attraction of some form, whether it's people coming for mines or hotsprings or other natural wonders.

Bohandas
2021-08-31, 01:40 PM
Neat. That's a good sized city, for the assumptions that inform D&D.

Good point. While D&D is pseudo-medieval, the city sizes lean closer to iron age, with even the largest planar metropolises having smaller populations than some of the cities of classical antiquity

Clistenes
2021-09-08, 06:56 AM
How "fantastic" is the fantasy city? How is the economy?

If it is medieval or Renaissance level, people would make their own fun most of the time: drinking, gambling, cockfights, target shooting...etc.

There would be brothels too.

During fairs and festivities there would be more stuff: sporting matches (horse racing, rowing, shooting, boxing, wrestling...etc.), dances, street musicians, puppet theater, acrobats, juggling, bullfighting, religious plays, processions...etc.
Not all of them every time, of course; each festivity would be centered around one or two events or activities.

Dr paradox
2021-09-09, 07:18 PM
How "fantastic" is the fantasy city?

The setting is relatively low fantasy. My rule of thumb is that the overall shape of the society doesn't require magic to run - wizards and so on are advisors and contractors. No trade via teleportation or flight, no brigades of war-wizards, no reliable corps of clerics for healing and disease control. "Paladin Orders" are mostly made up of Fighters, with the rare true paladin or cleric occupying a position of influence or leadership, "Wizard Schools" are 95% redundant heirs receiving a classical education who will never cast a single cantrip.


Good point. While D&D is pseudo-medieval, the city sizes lean closer to iron age, with even the largest planar metropolises having smaller populations than some of the cities of classical antiquity

I noticed that when I was looking through the DMG! I decided to go with figures closer to Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://https://gamingballistic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Medieval-Demographics-Made-Easy-1.pdf). Is there a particular reason to stick to the DMG's numbers for a custom setting?