Game Creation Notes

This is not really notes on game creation and how to do it, many others have that covered just fine in many other blogs of far superior quality and depth than I could hope to have here at this time. No, this post is about the process of creating my first world in DnD 3.5 and how I feel it is going.

In a word I would say "slowly" but that is to be expected.

Currently I am working on building a town map, with buildings, a marketplace and all the associated items to go with it including populating it with NPCs. Seems simple enough right? "X-town" has about 400 citizens, they are a lawful society and have light to medium military presence...sweet, I am done.

Not really because now I need to map out what my town of 400 people looks like. I need to have buildings of note, a variety of districts, is it in a mountain/river/desert/seaside, are there sewers and an underground that is either known or unknown, if so is it a bunch of ragtag beggars or further down is it a society living within the caverns below, are they good or bad in relation to the rest of the world, what is their culture based on financially and do they produce anything to trade with the world above?

This is honestly how my mind works, and it does this all at once like a massive power dump of questions that shoot holes in other questions and raises even more in asking them. 

So I have decided I am going to tackle this the only way I know how, one piece at a time. I will begin with the gates to the town/city (see it has grown already). Are there walls around it? What material makes up the walls if so? Who guards the walls, how trained and how vigilant are they?

Yeah that looks like a good plan right there. This will allow me to create a border of sorts around the area of the city, it gives me a beginning to the number of NPCs and a couple of varieties within a single class. I figure if I draw up a command class guard, a watch guard (lower ranking) and then a battle guard and mix them up a bit I should be good. The command class would be a bit more detailed than the rest and I would name a few of them since they will be most likely to have interactions at some point.

Once that is done I will tackle the first district as you walk into the city. What class makes up this area, what buildings do you see and how many are able to be entered and what shops or market types are available?

Again should work out with a few simple designs of buildings mixed and matched into the scene, a few NPCs of various importance and population density in the area can be decided a bit later.

Man this town building thing sounds easy when put that way, but what about story line? This is the difficult one for me and I don't know why. I get the idea and it is a simple idea really basically all you need is a mission goal(s), a protagonist, a bad guy and a reward for a job well done or penalties for a job poorly done.

Being we are starting with level 1 characters this shouldn't be difficult really, I mean something as simple as, "Geldar has asked you to deliver a letter to his daughter who lives the next town over but is a 3 day journey on foot. Upon delivery you will receive x gold or item." As the characters grow in levels and abilities the adventures grow as well because I too am growing as a GM and sorting out the handling of the game...hey this really isn't going to be as bad as I thought.

Oh crap! Now I have to create a second town...maybe I will make it a small village instead that should be easier, right? Are they farmers, loggers, maybe crafstmen or maybe an evil town filled with dark wizards who have possessed the bodies of the townsfolk...see? here we go again.

Well I gotta go get working on this while I have some ideas in my head. In the meantime comment below regarding your preferred methodology in creating towns/cities and adventures to go with them.

Thanks for reading and happy adventuring,

~John~