The Noob Dungeon Master: You Start in a Town

I have been a Dungeon Master since 2015. Almost four years later I still consider myself a noob at the craft. So, take my musings as they are…musings. There are a lot of people who do this better than I and I will list a link to my favorites in another post.

Why should you start your D&D campaign in a town? What is a town anyway? Who decides what is a town? Aren’t cities and towns basically the same? What makes a town different from say a village? Why are you asking us questions, is this a delaying tactic?

Hardly.

Let’s start with the definition of a town. Here’s the top definition I googled up:

an urban area that has a name, defined boundaries, and local government, and that is generally larger than a village and smaller than a city.

Okay, great. So it is an urban area with its own property and government that is bigger than a village but smaller than a city. Well, it took a genius to figure that out! Okay, so how large or small of a difference are we talking?

The D&D 5th Edition’s “Dungeon’s Master’s Guide” gives a village to have a population of up to 1,000 people, a town up to 6,000, and a city up to 25,000+ people depending of course on your fantasy world’s historical motif. (e.g. whether your world is more early/late Medieval or early/late Renaissance etc.) Don’t let these numbers frighten you. The party will only interact with a fraction of these populations.

So why a town rather than a village? The big reason is that a village is boring, really boring. You can set up some “grab and fetch” type adventures, but for the most part, nothing is going on. I learned this the hard way in my second campaign when I found the city of my first campaign to be a bit overwhelming. I overcorrected and threw my players into a small town in the wilderness with nothing to do. The second campaign was mercifully shorter than the first.

So why a town rather than a city? You can do a city, but they tend to be more complex and each district is a “town” of its own. There is a lot of worldbuilding that goes into making a good city and that often takes getting your feet wet a bit as a DM before you jump through that dimension doorway.

If you are a new DM take it from a noob who learned the hard way: begin your adventure in a town. Towns are big enough to have interesting quests, local politics, and intrigue. Towns are also typically situated between the civilized lands of cities and the wilderness that accompanies villages.

I have more to say on the subject of “You Start in a Town,” but that will have to wait until next time.