IF you're into homebrew...I created a new TTRPG if you'd like to try it!

@acreletae we ya at??!

There's a lot steal here Thank you lol

I hope she's okay!

One of those hidden gems of a channel that you occasionally find behind the curtain of the algorithm:)

Wonderful vid, dear lady. Especially loved the “Sausages!” dog tale :): Genius :D So refreshing to find content that is helpful and discursive amidst the torrent of min-maxing BS that seems the staple fare of nearly all other D&D channels I have found. P.S. honourable mentions to Matthew Colville and Seth Skorkowsky for their channels too ;)

The 'sausages dog' story was great! I'm going to have to steal that I'm afraid (reskinned, obviously)

Nort soide/ Sout soide! :) 5:56 'something casually on fire' love it!

Surely, the city exist regardless of the players goals. Design your cities, let the players loose. Cities are not just big towns. Cities will have stuff that towns don't have; E.g. towns don't have cathedrals. This includes problems - if horses are used for transport, getting rid of horse manure is a major problem for a city.

This really helped. I had a slight feeling like I was going to too far with my dungeon and this video confirmed it. I want it to be a tense situation with hair raising turns, not a slog. Thanks. Hope you start doing your channel again. I subbed just in case :)

Best video on the topic yet!! Thank you!

Thank you for the information. Interested in city planning since world-building an accident society similar to Rome. Btw: that accent is cute as hell. Irish?

Yo, so I just want to let you know: you're brilliant. Your advice to new DMs is true insight from someone who clearly has thought about these RP subjects a great deal, but also loves to game, and it shows in your awesome content. Don't know if you're still out there, yo, but I wanted to thank you for helping me feel more confident in starting new campaigns and thinking outside the box, to breathe new life into adventuring worlds. Thank you, for real. You rock. Your next biscuit's on me, dude.

Awesome video! I've been working on homebrewing a city and I had thought of none of these things. So helpful!

Great tips. Loved the dog story too, heh. Another thing that is useful when making cities or settlements in particular is to treat them, a bit, like characters. Stereotypes, as bad as that sounds, are useful for that. We all hear them, "oh yeah, people from X are always doing this" or "they loooove their (thing)" so thinking up stuff in that vein can help you give more character to a city. Speech or mannerisms or tiny cultural traits like that can go a long way when you need to improv really secondary NPCs, like the kind they'd stop in the street to ask for directions, as well as give you a way to distinguish more important NPCs when they have their own take, or break away entirely, from the stereotype. Not to mention, it helps you distinguish Snotty Noble A, from the city of Snotshire, from Affable But Actually Sort of Patronizing Noble B, from the city of Condescendingbourne.

Just discovered your channel. Really good DM material. Lots of inspiration. Bit sad to see you haven't uploaded in 3 years!

stumbled here from Matt Colville -- he working on his "Capital" city for his new campaign -- also found this for map making -- watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Hahah, you have a great sense of humour. Your games must be fun :) The main piece of advice I took from this (which I wasn't doing) is describe moving through the different districts. That alone was worth watching the video.

There are several REALLY good random village/town/city generators online... I use two to generate random maps... does the city have walls, does it have a town square / farmers market / castle / massive church / etc... for villages & smaller I typically just have 1 or 2 points of "interest"... for cities, I might have upwards of 10+ places of "interest"... so, every town is gonna have a kinda generic inn / tavern whatever... but a city might have a high class tavern with a gambling section and even a stage for performers etc... and the bigger city might be renown for some specific attractions... say a fantastic greenhouse where hundreds of kinds of herbs are available? a world famous tobacconist? or one of the best forges / smithy in the region ( prices might be high, but if you can afford it, go ahead and buy that +3 long sword while you are here... ;)... )... sky is the limit! Larger cities will almost always also have guilds... which I incorporate into lots of adventures... you got thieves guilds, assassins guilds, adventurers guilds, religious guilds / cults, bards / acting guilds, sailing / pirate guilds, you name it... large cities might even have arenas with gladiators and who knows what... One of the best ways I get my teams to do stuff is having them perform tasks in service to a guild for membership etc... and of course, once they are members, they can always come back for new adventures / payment / etc... So what do I decide... 1 - how many points of interest does the city have / 2 - does it have a castle & who is in control of city & guards etc... / 3 - religion of city & racial prominence of city / 4 - how "seedy" is the city... lots of gambling dens? or super legal... / 5 - what major industry is in city? agriculture / carpentry / metal works / ship building / magic / slave trade / banking / textile / mining / etc... Current adventure for my team - The leader of the thieves guild in a minor metropolitan city runs 4 gambling houses... over the course of the last 2 weeks some stranger has been showing up at them, playing cards for a couple hours and leaves after making a PILE of money... guy never loses... The team is to investigate "how" this guy is winning so much and apprehend him if they spot him somehow cheating... however do it discretely as he doesn't want any gambling house to turn into a mob scene and piss off other patrons... ;) ( obviously this is just the tip of the actual plot, but it sounds simple enough... the guild will pay the team 500 gold up front and upon completion of said mission, given membership into the guild plus additional reward... )

Super helpful

This was a fantastic video. Thank you! There’s a bunch of stuff I’m just going to straight up steel Ha ha ha. I’m really happy that I stumbled across your channel this morning.

Suddenly the sausage dog became important XP

You mentioned your campaign that was focused only in a city. It is my first time dming and I'm doing a city campaign. I would love any advice you have cause I really need it. On like the advice and other misc. things

As a player, I usually don't like GMPCs since they are rarely "just a player" and instead end up having the game skewed towards them by the GM. As a GM, I don't understand the want for one for two reasons: (1) you are literally playing every single other creature in the world and thus have as many cool, interesting characters as you like, (2) you ARE a player despite the traditional division of GM/Player, though the way you play is a little different. Rather than make your own PC, give life to the creatures that you have your party fight. A group of skeletons could be people from 1000 years ago who just got resurrected and are convinced they are flesh and blood. A group of kobolds could be fighting because their clan is on the verge of starvation. A dragon could be so incredibly full of itself it would think everything people said or did revolve around it somehow. This makes RPing much more fun and gives you the GM opportunities to reward your players without necessarily having to go through combat. It gives you a chance to make memorable, fun encounters, which players enjoy a great deal in my experience. This is also important in terms of building a narrative as it encourages you to create a variety of colorful characters that all have reasons to be involved in your story and may be related to each other in some manner. What ends up happening with GMPCs almost every time (I have only ever had one exception to this) is that they become too 'special', too connected to every aspect of the story, too relevant to every single thing that is happening. Finally, the GM IS playing the game. You are RPing every character interactions besides in-party ones. You are using combat rules with your monsters and class-based characters. You are, as the DM, literally empowered use every aspects of the rules books and of your imagination that you like. Everything that the players do, you can as well on a much vaster scale: you ARE literally everybody else in the world.

I love that blind begger story! That's so smart

Why is there no link to your boyfriends channel and or vids?

Mildly attractive women don't play dnd. Take off that mask and show us who you really are!

Thanks for the video. I am starting to be a DM for my friends. I have a lot to learn. Awesome tips and I will try to plan out my adventure. look forward to the other videos.

I would love to play in one of your games if you do anything online 😊

*hears the watermelon thing while doing other stuff* "Have I given yu a like yet?" *confirm i have* "oh, next step then" *subscribes*

Your games sound like a lot of fun - I might have to nick your Orc Fruit Ninja idea! This video was really helpful, thank you for making it. I hope you're still playing/DMing!

With all the people on KZbin giving advice on how to GM dose one really need to buy the book on how to GM

That's an interesting way of handling the players

What song did you use in the beginning sounds familiar but can't tell? I listen to a lot of odd music

I've found, at least for pathfinder, that the gamemaster's guide & a truly priceless book known as ''toolbox'' printed by AEG some time ago make city creating fairly easy. Start with an idea; is the city primarily a military outpost, a trading center or perhaps the capital of the local nation or empire? Also consider the primary race(s) there. Dwarven cities will be FAR different than an Elven or a human settlement. IF the city is located in an area that has been civilized and peaceful for a VERY long time, it's possible it may not even have walls but that's unlikely & tactically foolish. There are countless cities & settlements already out there produced by so many outstanding people & companies that you can just rename & repackage as your city as well. What the PCs & players don't know in regards to this issue sure as heck won't hurt them (unless they run afoul of the law or other 'civilized' dangers).

I roll off hit points and am willing to kill players if they keep up bad behaviour.

Thanks for taking the time.

You can also double bluff make the DMPC say they think they know the answer but its wrong.

Most city building advice I have focuses heaps on important people and in-city questing, which is great, but I love the way you speak on the "feel" of the city.

my DMPC is a lizardfolk barbarian (up in the air), he's literally the parties pet monster, and will literally not attack anything he perceives stronger than him unless told too. He's totally wild and super unpredictable, but he has knowledge of the island where the players are marooned (places to avoid, points of interest), just in case they meander or the game stagnates. But he's also fucking stupid, so not everything he says is actually going to be correct, and might even end up misleading everyone into some shenanigans. Also, I kinda really like dramatic irony, of sending my poor lizard (my party has named Ned's Newt, which is super offensive, I mean, fuck those smooth skins!) into a trap, shit's so intense and scary.

Substitute for a plot hook: tell players "make a character that has a reason to be there"

Informative 👍👍👍

I never like videos. the last time I did had to be literally years ago. maybe 2. but this video. I had to like. it gave me r really great insight on what I want my world to be like and your also a very entertaining talker. love the stories and examples you use. thank you so much. you should have a biscuit for making such a good video.

Thank you.

i have a character i've never gotten the chance to play; Setevios Dulaskry (going by Steven Dallas) is a tiefling born into a cult, but at the age of 13, he heard an almost musical voice draw him towards a nearby town, in which he saw an old man getting mugged. without the voice telling him to, he immediately jumped into action to help the old man, and that's how he was adopted by a cleric of the neutral good deity Sarenrae. Setevios worships Sarenrae, but is himself lawful evil. every day he asks Sarenrae for the strength to resist the evil in his blood. he is a cleric, but doesn't get alignment-granted spells (pathfinder). if you like the character concept, feel free to introduce him as an NPC to your campaign

Something casually on fire 5:54

I'm working on a campaign now where rather than having centralized kingdoms, there are lots of littler city-states, ranging from mega-cities to large towns. This was super helpful for me to plan and make running them a little less intimidating. Thanks!

Good video, thank you. The sausage dog is going into my city.

You’re really good at this

On the note of randomness, I once placed a severed hand in a pool of blood in the PC's path. They looked at it for a bit then shrugged and moved on.