Article - Designing Quality Towns

[Drakefyre]

Article - Designing a Quality Town

 

Towns. Every scenario has to have at least one of these. Most likely, almost everyone has an unfinished, 50-town 'masterpiece' somewhere on their hard-drive, begging to be cut down and simplified into a releasable scenario. Overestimating your ability to create towns and underestimating the amount of work they require are two mistakes commonly made by newer scenario designers. This is especially pertinent with the Blades of Avernum Editor's terrain system.

 

Towns take time. A lot of time. In Blades of Exile, it was possible to slap together a well-designed town in an hour or two, and spend another hour or two writing dialogue for it. Well, no more. In Blades of Avernum, it's not uncommon to spend around six hours just designing and tweaking a 48x48 town, and writing dialogue can add another three to four hours if you do it right. That's around ten hours spent on a single town. Fifty friendly towns, each full of personalities, will make anyone go crazy - it would take more than 20 days, non-stop, to write those towns.

 

That's why this article is here. I aim to help you cut down on the number of towns in your scenarios and refine the ones that are left. The easiest way to do this is with a series of questions that should be answered for every town, along with some helpful tips that I've picked up along the way.

 

Really, the first thing to do is decide whether a town you've planned is necessary. What is its purpose? Does it do anything to advance the plot or add atmosphere to the scenario, or is it to provide a break from dungeons and give shops? Towns with the latter purpose will only hinder the completion of your scenario. Think about the scenario with and without the town - if it would run pretty much the same way, definitely consider removing the town.

 

The first order of business when creating new towns is choosing a size. 32x32 will suffice for most forts, small towns, temples, smaller dungeons, and so on. A 48x48 town is generally large enough for anything you're trying to do. A 64x64 town in Blades of Avernum is a lot bigger than one from Blades of Exile. A town that size should only be used on something that is truly massive and you're sure that you can't fit in a 48x48 town.

 

When creating your town, you want to think about the region in which it's being set. What's the environment like? How far from the largest cities is it? How do people here make a living? How strong is the presence of authority? All of these things should be reflected in the making of the town. You won't have a mining town in the middle of a forest, but you may have a logging town. In the mountains, it would generally be a mining town. Have mines, miners, ore storage, people that sell mining supplies, and maybe even a miner's union. It will help you set the mood of the town and help you get a better idea of what goes on in the town.

 

If the town is far away from other cities and has few authority figures, is crime rampant? Or is it a peaceful backwater village that doesn't merit much attention? Do people feel resentful towards a faraway government that they never see? An easy way to get a handle on the sentiments of the people in a town is to place yourself in their shoes and see what kind of reactions you would have if you were a firebrand, a simple trader, a priest, et cetera.

 

The town should also have some connection to the plot - having towns for the sake of towns is just asking for trouble. Without a plot connection, it's hard to be motivated to complete a town. Maybe the town of Greenleaf is nearby an evil mage's lair and magical fringe effects have caused two-headed calves to be born. Do they know he's there? Or are they clueless? In real life, events like these caused the town to start branding people as witches. Does this happen in your town?

 

In any case, they would not stand idly by. The main plot usually has an effect on every town, and thusly on the characters that populate it. Any events that happen affect people, and they should talk about it in their dialogue. Everyone has an opinion on things, and most people aren't shy about sharing it. The more depth you add to a character's dialogue, the better the player will identify with them and the scenario as a whole.

 

On the subject of dialogue, it should be full and fleshed out. Almsot everyone should talk to the party - even if it's just a simple 'I'm busy right now' message. People are more than just shopkeepers or soldiers or priests. They're fathers, daughters, neighbors, et cetera. They have hobbies, relationships, sons away at war, and so on. Bringing that out in dialogue is a lot easier in smaller scenarios, but it should happen to some degree in all scenarios. People like the king have more to worry about than just the party and their mission.

 

Also, town design should be logical. There are generally paths in a town that lead through it, sections with houses for the town's inhabitants (it's unbelievable how many scenarios ignore/leave out these), and some easy-to-reach figure of authority. The mayor's office is not going to be in the back corner of a town behind forty houses with no sign and no paths. Generally, there is not a lot of empty space around town, and if there is, it's usually spread out by leaving more space between buildings.

 

That being said, towns should not be (and are not) designed in perfect symmetry. To add realism, most designers make towns a little messy. Not every building came up at the same time - there were some when the town was first formed, and the rest came up into open space at a later time. If you have that mindset when designing towns, your towns will generally seem a little more realistic than the 'planned community' that's extraordinarily neat, with a lot of buildings the same size and in neat little rows.

 

With Blades of Avernum, we're given more tools that should be taken advantage of. Not everything in a town is the same height or even on level ground. Using hills in some capacity makes a town look better, and so does adding signs around buildings (even if it's not the terrain and a custom state instead).

 

Towns should be built to engage the player and advance the plot, not merely be a break from dungeon crawling. A good town can do much more to advance the plot than a dungeon can. Character interactions will draw the player in, and making a town consistent with its surroundings will set a mood for the town and give it a natural environment. And above all, remember that towns take time.

[Donald Hebb]

To put it simply, I disagree.

 

What does a town do? It provides a hub for the rest of the adventure. An adventure doesn't need a town- see, for example, Bandits II. The amount of work I put into Birmington was, admittedly, pretty large, although only for porting a 48x48 town into the corner of a 64x64 one. Falling Stars' central city, Xabungle, has almost nothing to do with enhancing the plot. Only the important NPCs and events drive the plot, and rightfully so. A scenario isn't harmed by people commenting on what's going on, but it's not a prerequisite.

 

In fact, I'd argue that if you spend too much time on town design, then you lose focus of the rest of the scenario. See, for example, A Gathering Storm. Nobody will dispute it- this scenario has some of the best town design to date. Essentially, that is the scenario's biggest flaw. It has been cited that even in Drizzt's Shadow of the Stranger, people lose track of the scenario when strolling about town. These are admittedly stretches, but each of those examples have towns that definitely contribute to the plot and are attached to it, but they themselves become too much of the plot. Mendor's tremendously large town was the reason why I have played it and probably never will- towns are not the point of a scenario.

 

Make them, make them make sense, and then leave them. Plot advancement is the point of the scenario, not towns. I don't care if a town is nothing but people giving manufactured responses- Unless an important NPC is in a town, then I want nothing more out of a town than vital services (training, inns, et cetera) and maybe a small flash of life (ie. what the town is made mildly unique by). That's it.

 

Now, have you ever wondered why Rhapsody In Blue will never get done? Hm?

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I disagree with both of you.

Drakey, only on the point about planned communities. What's so unrealistic about planned communities? If every town in the scenario is planned, sure, it's usually unrealistic. But usually is not always. It depends on the setting of the scenario. Is it a part of the country with a lot of people passing through all the time, like the capital? If this is the case, there's nothing wrong with a planned community. One of the staff members in the hospital I was in was from Philadelphia. He was talking about how awful the road system was in the Boston area, and he's right. He also told me that, in Philadelphia, the streets are arranged into neat rows. It happens. Of course, if it's a mining or logging town, chances are, the community won't be planned.

 

TM is right, in part. Towns are not the only thing that should drive a plot. In fact, in an RPG, it's often the dungeons that shape the plot more than the towns, and making the towns too interesting will distract the player. The Shining Force series suffers from this problem, although the plot (especially the third one) and the combat more than make up for it. However, towns are also important for more than just inns and shops and housing major characters. As Drakey said, towns should also set the atmosphere of the game, and major towns should also have a part in the plot. The Final Fantasy series does an good job with their towns, especially in FF 7.

[Drakefyre]

I definitely think that you misunderstood my main point about towns and plot.

 

The towns themselves rarely advance the plot. It's the characters inside them that really make a town - the rest is just a shell for them. But there's no reason that it can't be a pretty shell.

 

Trouble in Mendor and A Gathering Storm go overboard with respect to towns. That's not at all what I'm advocating with this article.

[Donald Hebb]

I still disagree with you: A town should be transient, much like a 5-minute quickie. Go in, get what you need, get out.

Plots don't need towns, the notion of them is mostly superfluous.

[Drakefyre]

For an example, look at Chains. I had a much better time in the towns than I did in the dungeons. Towns in Chains are basically what I'm shooting for in the article.

[*i]

Towns are a tool that can serve to help advance the plot. There is no set thing saying what a town should or should not be, it's in the eye of the designer. Towns are not necessary, but they can be very useful.

 

TM, you need to broaden your perspectives rather than presume that your way of advancing the plot (with dungeons and heavy NPC involvement) is the only way to do so. It all comes down to how a designer pulls off using the towns in their own creative ways. If they can pull it off well, more power to them.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Quote:

Originally written by *i:
TM, you need to broaden your perspectives rather than presume that your way of advancing the plot (with dungeons and heavy NPC involvement) is the only way to do so. It all comes down to how a designer pulls off using the towns in their own creative ways. If they can pull it off well, more power to them.

Ha ha ha.
Where have we heard this before, TM?
TM's way is not the only way, as Stareye said. In fact, people generally prefer Drakey's way. Don't let TM throw you off too much.

[Donald Hebb]

Stareye, rules are defined by their exceptions (everything is relative). I'd like to see how a town could advance a plot, because I haven't seen it in Blades to date.

PS- Zeeqon? I'm glad to see that you're so entralled about paradigms of scenario design! Why not prove your point by putting somethign out? (Or will we only see your briliant ideas in your proffesional-grade RPG?)

[Drakefyre]

Look at Chains, Tatterdemalion, Nephil's Gambit, Requelle's Nightmare, etc.

 

Towns don't need to be static - things can happen in them.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

A) I have put something out. It is called "The Scenario".

Most likely, only in my professional-grade RPG. I may release something for BoA though.

 

As I said, in FF7, the towns are well designed. Rocket Town, for instance, contains a rocket, as the name implies. This rocket is necessary. It's a small town, and not only does it not distract the player from the plot, it draws the player deeper into it. Midgar and Nibelheim are also very well-made towns that enhance the plot.

But I think I know what you mean. No, the buildings generally will not talk. But simply making towns that do nothing but house characters and shops generally makes the scenario a little worse. I'm sure if you had taken time to make the town interesting in B2, its CSR score would have gone up a full point.

[Frozen Feet]

What about making a town you have to frequently visit? Like, you have to deliver artefacts to a temple, and the temple will give you hints about other artefacts when some are recovered. I'm planning to do this sometime.

[The Creator]

There is one town in Deadly Goblins. It does more than just house the local "Bob" (Dasen) and provide shops - there is an attack on it by the goblins that does (to my mind) an excellent job of introducing them as villains. All the NPCs add atmosphere and provide info about the threat they're facing. Well, most of them. Some of the guards are just there for laughs.

[Alorael at Large]

BoA does make town design a real investment of time, but I still prefer towns that feel like towns to towns that feel like they were put in by a scenario designer for a purpose. Whether it's the hub of all the plot or just a waystation with a few shops, people should have things to say or reasons not to say them. A town doesn't need to be central to the scenario, but it should feel alive.

 

—Alorael, who does agree that in certain cases towns can be distracting. That's almost always in very short scenarios, when any distraction at all will leave a major impression in the mind of the player and create a feeling of aimlessness.

[Therakul]

I won't claim to be very good at this stuff, but even if I started a scenario, I probably wouldn't finish it until about 5 years had passed. Anyhoo, here's an idea for a town that fits both Drakey's idea and cuts down on things unrelated to the scenario directly.

 

Picture this: an army encampment. It is where your first mission begins. Either through an attack on it by enemy forces, or a task given to your "infiltration unit" by a colonel (or a general, I'm not very good with military ranks). You go out kill the enemy wizard or kill off a large number of his subordinate wizards. All of the spells maintained by said mages suddenly break apart upon the death of their creator/s (yes I'm stealing this from Mercedes Lackey's books).

 

When you return to the camp, everything is in shambles. The magical energy released by the exploding spells has wreaked havoc and is twisting reality. Then you find out that the Mage-lord that you supported has been assassinated and that the problems were caused by his spells all ripping apart (or by the enemy weapon that was used to kill him). Each time you finish a quest to rescue someone, or gather information, or destroy some magical monster, something in the camp changes. On top of that, people are evacuating the area, so there are fewer and fewer people that you can talk to, but they now have more to say. Eventually, you will reach the point where the party evacuates too, but that they need to sheppard the most recent casualties out to a safe rendezvous.

 

In just about every part, the town changes, in some cases drastically, in others, very little; but the town is a dynamic part of the scenario. On the other hand, since just about everyone is a soldier, you don't have to find houses or jobs for them; all of the "streets" are straight and neat; and, almost none of the people have to have original dialogue, just give them a speech window that tells about how you talked to the soldiers and that they chatted with you while they were off duty (or told you that they can't talk because they are heading out for their daily duties).

 

I know, I probably shouldn't talk, because I don't really intend to write my own scenarios, but I thought I might be able to at least help generate ideas for other people.

[Vent]

I have seen three usermade scenario (so not big projects full-time years involvement) that suceed make a plot mostly only through a town. For the three it was in town plus some underground, but one of them had an intro out of the town. None are BoE related that I never played.

 

For two, they was strongly based on a party with a main character who is a sneaker/thief. With BoA like parties, I doubt that this could be easy/enough realistic.

 

The main trick for non linearity management was not be able enter in house/area/street until you get the rigth pass paper, password, key, spell, information to allow the right dialog trigger. Each quests was very secret and had to influence only very few of the numerous npc in town.

 

That said, there was the third scenario. Not necesseraly thief based and a town design not very good because of too large area sometimes a bit empty.

 

This third scenario had an unusual quality to make plot evolves. There was no "old wizard", "mysterious voices", "king of the area", "captain" to guide you through the quests chains. You are just talking with npc, finding information scrolls, hear discussions. Most subquests you do have no link to main plot when the subquest starts but often lead you to an information or events related to main plot.

 

Most often making evolve the plot require to the player to have quote information (sometimes more than once) and have the curiosity to check. Overall the player has to set him ownself an investigation to do.

 

That also works well because it is based on "global conspiracy theory" and "hidden second secret gouvernement that took the power and lead puppets".

 

A problem with BoA engine for these three scenario is to not have a medium scale for towns (there are just "outdoors" and "not outdoor"). This could make difficult moving management throughout the town. One of these 3 scenario was using a solution that could probably used in BoA to manage in part this problem. Few free teleporters in town to jump from one area to few other far area. But for this sort of scenario in BoA, a more intensive use of underground (or perhaps stairs up) should probably be required anyway.

[ThirdParty]

I think the main point to take from the disagreement here is that town exploration should be optional. Make essential services easy to find and easy to return to (exception: players dependent on lockpicks should be used to scrounging around a little to find a store). If you're going to put in plot-vital NPC's, make sure the player knows who he's looking for and will be able to find him easily.

 

However, there's nothing wrong with hiding extra things for players with the patience to look. Maybe there's a secret passage that leads to a supply cache for the player to steal. Maybe one of the storekeepers, if chatted with carefully enough, will offer to show off his "special" stock. Maybe if you buy a drink for the guy at the bar, he'll offer you a side-quest. If the player's interested in the history of the region, the official version can be found in the library or town hall, while the old retired fellah will tell the real story. Evil high priests and their disciples need places to sleep just like everyone else does, and may be inclined to sacrifice the adventurers to Maloch first and ask questions later when said adventurers enter their home without permission. Etc.