What’s in a Village? (part 2)

Intro

Part one delved into many of the places that might be in a village and a bit on how a village might be placed in relation to larger communities or perhaps castles. This part will explore the people who populate a village.

The Basics – People in the Places

It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them.  How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.

It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them.  How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.

As previously discussed, it’s nice to have ‘something’ stick about each village (or town, etc) your party passes through, so try to make at least a couple people or places stand out in some manner or fashion. Think of your family, friends, coworkers, or even strangers you interact with throughout the day. What makes each unique? There are so many things to choose from. Some examples: how they dress, laugh, walk, or talk are different mannerisms someone might have. What about personal appearance? Hair or eye color, hair style, tattoos, missing body parts can all highlight one NPC over the rest. Watching random people can be very inspiring for creating your world’s cast of characters.

When you go to create the people in your places, you want to keep your world’s background and concepts in mind. For example, in earlier centuries in the Real World, people had (much) larger families than they do today. There were a number of reasons for this, but largely due to infant and childhood mortality rates being very high. Sometimes only one in five children would make it to adulthood. Whether or not you consciously have this in your world, you may want to have an idea of average family size for each race just to make it smoother creating later.

As morbid as it might sound, it’s also an opportunity for roleplay encounters. For example, after passing by Grick’s pig farm, you inform your party that they see a screaming and crying boy of about ten years old yelling ‘Ma! Pa! Jynnie got stuck bad!’ as he races down the road. The party hurries to investigate and you find a teen girl on death’s door, huge gashes in her side, being hugged by other kids screaming ‘Please don’t die!’. Your party now has the chance for a simple heroic deed, probably with the simplest cure spell your cleric has.

Getting back to family size, when you create a family-run farm for example, you’ll want to have an appropriate number of kids, more younger than older. You may also want to consider multiple generations under the same roof, or at least on the same property; grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins are all possibilities. “Ye need potatoes? Go round back of the small barn and see old Sarl. Go easy with him, he’s my mom’s brother and ain’t been right after that bugbear smacked him in the head twenty-odd summers back”

It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them.  How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.

As previously discussed, it’s nice to have ‘something’ stick about each village (or town, etc) your party passes through, so try to make at least a couple people or places stand out in some manner or fashion. Think of your family, friends, coworkers, or even strangers you interact with throughout the day. What makes each unique? There are so many things to choose from. Some examples: how they dress, laugh, walk, or talk are different mannerisms someone might have. What about personal appearance? Hair or eye color, hair style, tattoos, missing body parts can all highlight one NPC over the rest. Watching random people can be very inspiring for creating your world’s cast of characters.

When you go to create the people in your places, you want to keep your world’s background and concepts in mind. For example, in earlier centuries in the Real World, people had (much) larger families than they do today. There were a number of reasons for this, but largely due to infant and childhood mortality rates being very high. Sometimes only one in five children would make it to adulthood. Whether or not you consciously have this in your world, you may want to have an idea of average family size for each race just to make it smoother creating later.

As morbid as it might sound, it’s also an opportunity for roleplay encounters. For example, after passing by Grick’s pig farm, you inform your party that they see a screaming and crying boy of about ten years old yelling ‘Ma! Pa! Jynnie got stuck bad!’ as he races down the road. The party hurries to investigate and you find a teen girl on death’s door, huge gashes in her side, being hugged by other kids screaming ‘Please don’t die!’. Your party now has the chance for a simple heroic deed, probably with the simplest cure spell your cleric has.

Getting back to family size, when you create a family-run farm for example, you’ll want to have an appropriate number of kids, more younger than older. You may also want to consider multiple generations under the same roof, or at least on the same property; grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins are all possibilities. “Ye need potatoes? Go round back of the small barn and see old Sarl. Go easy with him, he’s my mom’s brother and ain’t been right after that bugbear smacked him in the head twenty-odd summers back”

People Outside of the Places

There’s almost always going to be people outside of the ‘usual places’ that you’ve already whipped up for your village. Some of examples of these people are reclusive mages, rangers and druids in the woods, healer on the edge of town who concocts remedies from local plants, woodsmen who hate civilization, maybe even a lady of the evening somewhere.

Like the people around town, each of them will have their own life going on with a roof (probably), a family (perhaps), talents, daily routines, likes, and dislikes so you’ll probably want to fill those in as you’re writing.

Making your Village (or something else) Reusable

Rotate the Map / Directions

One of the easiest things you can do is rotate the village map, which your region map may force you to do anyhow.  If your players are heading northwest towards the Nvelk forest and come through the village,  the main road will likely go something like southeast to northwest.  If your party decides to push right through and not stop for all the roleplay goodness you packed in there, you can place it again near the Ospaa Swamp, where the road is generally west to east.

Flip the map

This is easier if you have your maps in electronic form, but you could just flip to a mirror image of your map. You can flip it either horizontally or vertically. Your road that was going 60 degrees left off the main road is now on the right.  The small river on the top side of the map is now on the bottom, etc.  It may be hard to do a key at the top of your notes for this, so just carefully go through them and change any references to the changes you made.

Placeholder Labels

When you write your notes, instead of putting in a reference to the Eldt River, just put in RIVER.  The same for things like roads, forests, notable landscape items.  Then, when you go to place your village, you can fill the various landmarks near it.

Move Roads or Landmarks

Side roads, notable hills, or similar landmarks can be moved around if needed to alter the look and feel of a village. This really only needs to be done if you mentioned the item while the party was busily ignoring the awesomeness of your creations.

Extra Names/NPCs

When you’re creating your village for the first time, you might consider creating extra names for NPCs. It could be a pool of extra names or extra names for each specific NPC.  Generally, the more individualized or significant NPCs should have a pool of their own so you can choose those with more care. Farmers, their kids, tavern/inn staff members, and other more generic NPCs would be more likely to pull from a pool of extra names.

Where Did I Use This?

If your memory is anything like mine, you may want to consider a page/entry at the beginning of your notes on the place to log different things mentioned below.  Consider it similar to a changelog page in a technical document.  This way, you can better keep track of what you put where and not confuse the players, especially that one who has the ridiculously sharp memory.

Each entry would include at least:

* Where the village was placed.
* What was the village name.
* How the map was oriented.
* What were the placeholder names.
* Where you put the roads/landmarks
* Names of encountered NPCs.

Wrap Up

There’s a whole lot of ideas in here. Some of them will resonate with you and some won’t; it’s the way of things. Like any other game concepts or methodologies, use what you think works best for you and discard the rest. I certainly don’t prepare the same way I did two, ten, or twenty years ago. It’s an always evolving process, and I hope that some of this is useful enough to you to add into yours. Happy Gaming!