How to create a DnD Village?
How to create a DnD Village?
For this example, we will try to create a small Swamp Village for our campaign.
About creating villages in D&D
Villages are not the most exciting places in DnD. Most of the time, a village is a place for your players that just started the campaign or in the long run, a stop to rest up between adventures that lead the players to Dungeons or other Quest Locations. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be boring or don’t have something to do with them. The opposite, if you craft your village well, there could be plenty of things to explore for your players and stories to craft if you do it well.
Villages are not that small when you think about it. They can still have around a thousand inhabitants, maybe not a lot of guilds, maybe an inn or a blacksmith and perhaps a shrine or a chapel for a deity or god. And even then, a Guild/Inn/Blacksmith/Chapel is maybe a lot for a village, so when coming up with a village so my advice is to think small on the amenities and things you can find in means of merchants and shops.
However, his doesn’t mean that the players will not have a chance to repair their weaponry, find a place to sleep, or to drink their ale and mead. Just the way they will get it should be different. Want to go to the Inn? Well, maybe it’s only a taproom inside of a warm barn, where the local villagers gather at the end of the day, they want to find a place to sleep and rest for a night? Maybe it’s a haystack instead of a warm inns bed or a bed at the local village elder that is a small patron to those who venture through the village. Maybe the village elder does that, to find somebody to deal with the village problems? There are many creative ways to think about the villages in the game you are running, not only that those innovative solutions can give your unique village flavor and a way to move the story of your campaign.
What is the Purpose of this village in your story?
When creating a village, town, or city first thing you should think about is what purpose the village brings to your story that you are trying to tell your players.
For the Swamp Village I want my players to experience a different settling where they could have encounters with rough terrain that don’t have much mobility, deal with a local band of mercenaries that are creating an illegal substances that are hurting the near by town. I want to explore why how the villagers are living with the oppression of the mercenaries, how they deal with them.
That’s a rough and unpolished idea for what I want fr
Where is the village located?
Considering the village location, it' s essential to know where is it, what surrounds the village and how this location can be used in your game. For this example, I chose the swamp location. Even though it’s not the most suitable location for the village to built-in, it brings out new challenges and ideas on how you can use the area in your game. Thinking what can surround it, there could be more dangers in the water like crocodiles or nasty fishes that could make nib on the inhabitants, in regards of the benefits, it’s a fertile place to grow rice, fish and the climate itself is not that bad to live in.
The next objective is to think what surrounds it, is it bandits, mercenary encampment on the way to the village, a sunken ruins that the villagers are talking about and make stories about so that the children wouldn’t venture there, the more things that you think about that could surround the village, the more adventure hooks you will have for your stories.
Who are the most important people in this village?
In history, the essential people in villages were the village reeve and the occasional noble or two. Maybe a couple of craftspeople or a person like a town elder that acts as a mayor to the town. If you create a place, it will be barren until there will be no NPC’s to inhabit the location itself, unless you try to tell another story, as in the village now is ruined, by a strange fog, water levels or a recent bandit raid. But if the story doesn’t follow tragic events, your players should have an opportunity to encounter a blacksmith, a priest, a merchant, and an Innkeeper. Most of the time that could be enough. And when you think about using a village in your games, most of the time it will be rather a low-level tier so any of those characters like an innkeeper or the village elder can be an appropriate person to give the PCs the quest. But even then, to create an engaging story, you must think of NPCs that drive the village, who holds the most influence, the most power, or just are the most exciting assets in the game for the story you are trying to tell.
In this case the most inportant characters should be a blind old women, named Verna, that tends to people that are alone in the Village and don’t have those that could take care of themselves, she is almost a village elder type of character, yet she is somehow is involved with the swamp ruins that are near the Swamp Village.
The Inkeeper of the Sunken Bottom - Felix Crown, a favorable person across the village that makes his living making sake out of rice and during the evening opening the tavern that is half sunked into the swamp it self. However not many know that he deals with the mercenaries most of his time.
Kheril Vistran the mercenary leader of the Bloodcloaks… and so on.
There is not much reason for making up an endless amount of NPCs unless you’re going to run only one major town or city in your campaign. Worldbuilding is excellent, but in means of our sanity, try to make only the characters that are useful for your campaign and serve more purpose. A good rule of thumb is when you are creating characters instead of just making another one, use the reason for a character for another existing one - Like if there is a mercenary and you need a priest - merge them even if the merger doesn’t make any sense. The ability to justify with logical things will make up tremendous and unique characters.
What threats this village has?
Villages are not an essential thing in the world when you are thinking about making a village, they maybe have resources, but unless the village is on top on an ancient ruin or a dungeon, it’s not going to be attractive to heroic adventurers, grand schemers or something of that nature. The most common things that the village will encounter will be orcs, maybe hags or other creatures that are not the highest CR.
How does this village sustain itself?
It’s interesting to build a fantasy place. Still, if there are inhabitants there, you must find some answers for the people who manage to get by, what natural resources they have, and cultivate, there should be a reason why the people settled here, or why they stayed. Are there merchants that travel into this place, are there laws and people that can protect it? These are the questions that need to be addressed if you want to create a believable place in a fictional world. And also, if you know what the village does to sustain it, it’s a great moment to use that against it to create new plot hooks in your game.
For what reasons this village is known for?
If you skip this step, all the work you did beforehand becomes a bit bland and useless unless you have some of those spicy and interesting facts about it. Maybe in this village, the best rice sake is made across the region, perhaps the environment there is foggy, but somehow it’s color is different, maybe there is a small floating island or a skull-shaped entry to the village through the mountain path. All of this spice will make the adventure towards the fictional place more interesting vibrant and also give you more creative ideas about how you can drive the story you are trying to make or at least give you more ideas in the long run.
What are the interests points of the village?
Now, if you wrote with me along with this blog post, this step should be easy. If you know the most important characters, the threats and buildings it all boils down into making a list of places where the adventurers can step their foot on and engage in your prepared sessions
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