Mystery Campaign Session Notes 17

Last time in the mystery campaign, the party found Lyssbetonk Cogswagon dead in her lab, captured the mercenary Tajana, and raised Cogswagon from the dead. This time, the party interrogates Tajana, and things take a dramatic turn. All that and more on this review of the mystery campaign.

When we picked up this time for the players pushing toward the resolution of this mystery, the party was just arriving at the guard headquarters, intent on interrogating Tajana and getting answers for their long-standing questions and suspicions. One of the first lines of questioning was about Tajana's connection to the original murder victim Hildy Analeth. From inside her cage, Tajana admitted that she killed Hildy because she had been ordered to eliminate any witnesses to the break-in at Cogswagon's lab. Under continued questioning, Tajana admitted to a total of 23 murders including Hildy's and Cogswagon's and supplied some details on who had ordered each death. 

With the murder of Hildy solved and the murderer in custody, Portia recognized that the party had done their due diligence and were no longer under any obligation to continue their work. But the party carried on, asking more and more questions of both Tajana and Portia. Much to Portia's discomfort, Tajana said that Riviel Jassimir was behind much of the violence in the city going back years. 

Under some pressure from the party, Portia privately explained something of a history of intentionally overlooked crimes. She said that Jassimir had been squashing labor movements and competitors with deadly force for years, and that her position as the benefactor of the guards largely insulated her from any consequences for her actions. The party pledged themselves to bringing Jassimir to justice, and Portia offered her own support--she planned to operate outside of the guard in order to help the party bring Jassimir to justice. 

Back in the main area of the guard headquarters, Tajana knocked over her cage and caused a commotion, attracting about 40 guards along with the party and Portia. At Portia's suggestion, the party decided to interview Tajana in this public way before all the guards to send a message about Jassimir and the true loyalties of the guards. Ais administered a thorough line of questions to Tajana, trying to get to the bottom of what Jassimir was really up to and how she could be counteracted. 

In a dramatic moment, it was revealed that Portia was an agent of Jassimir's. Ais slapped Portia in the face to mark her betrayal, which knocked her to the floor, and Beor upped the ante by swinging his hammer at Portia's head. Beor's blow struck heavily, crushing Portia's head and killing her. Thinking quickly, the party addressed the collected guards, trying to help them see things the party's way and start a revolution against Jassimir. It worked to an extent--the guards split into camps, some loyal to the guard cause and Jassimir, and others loyal to the party's revolutionary cause. In the end, the party's appeals convinced most of the guards, and only a few left the guard headquarters questioning the party.

Suddenly, Izzunech possessed Ais once more. He spoke of the excitement of Portia's death and praised Beor for his violence. After a lengthy exchange between Montana, Beor, and Izzunech, Ais passed out completely. When she rose again, after Izzunech's longest possession yet, the party was struck by the gravity of the situation. Beor held the final rites for Portia, blessing her into the next life. Montana took advantage of Tajana's unconsciousness after the commotion to steal her ocarina after earlier making her promise to learn two new instruments as part of her penance for her life of crime. 

That's where we left off for the session. Because the players managed to complete the crime-solving element of the story, I rewarded them with a level up, which brings them to level 10. In the few remaining sessions, they will be able to use their advanced abilities to strike back at Jassimir, possibly with their plans for revolution. It will be a dramatic end to a dramatic campaign, though of course, at this point, the pacing of the final chapter is entirely up to the party. They may choose to confront Jassimir directly or wage a more indirect war on her. Whatever they choose, it is sure to be at least as dramatic as the campaign that has preceded it. 

That's all for now. Next time on the mystery campaign, the players will engage in their struggle against Riviel Jassimir and try to create justice for the city of Yamseth. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Mystery Campaign Session Notes 16

Last time on the mystery campaign, the party shopped, escaped a burning building, and scried the assassin Tajana. We ended on something of a cliffhanger, and this time, the party focuses on the endgame and face off against Tajana. 

In the final moments of the previous session, Ais had cast "Invisibility" on the party in order to aid their unseen travel through the city. The group returned to Ais' house and planned. In particular, the party was pondering questions about how to face off against the incriminated Riviel Jassimir, and whether there was much hope that their interference would be a positive for the city. Would the end of the chaos storms even be a good thing, for instance? And what were they to do about Tajana coming to kill them?They decided to take these questions up with Portia, and headed for the guard headquarters. 

On the way, a chaos storm struck. Montana evaded the bolt of chaotic energy, but Ais and Beor were struck, resulting in Ais' being instantly hogtied and Beor's saturation with magical power, allowing him to cast 2nd-level spells at will. The party completed the journey to the guard headquarters and began speaking with Portia. The group took a fairly hostile tone with Portia, who seemed to balance sympathy for the party with a limitation on how much she could help them. The heart of the disagreement was about how poor the organization of the guards is, and all agreed that things could be better, though the disagreement continued. Portia offered city guards to defend the group, but they turned this down to protect the city guard. 

The party changed the subject and requested a courier. Portia sent for one, and the courier agreed to take the diamond from the party and deliver it to Lyssbetonk Cogswagon. Meanwhile, Beor demanded that the linking spell that connected the party be magically deactivated, wanting to speak with Chief of Police Horace Barnes; Porita sheepishly revealed that the spell had been ineffective for a while--it only lasts three days. This caused some frustration in the party, but Portia tried to deflect that they could more safely and strategically face Tajana without the link. 

The courier returned to the guard headquarters, saying that she could not deliver the diamond because Cogswagon would not open the door. Fearing for the worst, the party rushed to Cogswagon's lab and discovered Tajana disassembling the Weather Controller. Thinking fast, the party unleashed a series of spells that magically bound her, at which point Beor shattered her arm and the Undoer with his hammer. Montana then used "Polymorph" to turn Tajana into a slug and deposit her in a jar. Meanwhile, Ais found Cogswagon killed in her bed, her throat slit and her eyes lifeless. 

Beor transformed into a large hound and delivered Tajana to the guard headquarters, where she was placed in a high security cell. Back at the lab, Ais reassembled the Weather Controller save for the diamond and began to work on fixing up with Antigravity Boots. Beor returned, and Montana began to cast "Raise Dead" on Cogswagon. While Montana worked through the ceremony, Ais added the diamond to the Weather Controller, completing it, and switched it on to the setting to prevent chaos storms. Moments later, however, the storms struck again, the party each able to narrowly avoid its effects. 

Montana completed the "Raise Dead" spell on Cogswagon, who was disoriented. She was not sure how she felt it, but suspected she had died, but could not remember it. The party explained that Tajana had killed her, going into fairly grisly detail. Cogswagon was extremely vulnerable, and it was a rather emotional moment for all involved. She was surprisingly focused on learning the details of the Weather Controller's first run, and she said that the failure to work clearly indicates that the chaos storms are not weather at all. She went to rest, and the party said they would check in with her again soon. They turned to go to the guard headquarters again to interrogate Tajana, which is where we ended for the night.

This was a bit of a departure for this campaign. Where I began with some notes guiding sessions and recently transitioned into more reactive planning, this session represented a complete reliance on improvisation. That's more or less where my sweet spot for DMing is, but I have been wary of acting against my own best interests when it comes to long-term planned story events--a mystery just relies on more structure than improvisation is really geared towards. But we're in the endgame now. The remaining reveals are in place and I won't get in their way, so now it's just down to the players to see their agendas through and end this story as they see fit. I envision between 2 and 3 session more before the wrap-up, but of course, that remains to be seen. 

I also want to note for a second that I completely forgot that "Raise Dead" existed. I had Tajana kill Cogswagon and thought that would be a tragic way to reveal Cogswagon was innocent after all and get some emotional energy flowing. But Montana almost immediately resolved that problem with minimal complications. When we were done for the night, the players remarked on how Tajana's ease of being captured was surprising, and I was still hung up on how Cogswagon was alive again. Specifically, they said that I seemed quite alright with Tajana being captured--and in a way, I was. She's not the BBEG, and they planned well and then executed the plan well when facing off against her. They earned their victory, so I had no problem allowing for it. I mention these two things together because both were cases where playing along like nothing was disrupted really helped, and it even earned compliments from the players, which is always a great feeling. 

Next time on the mystery campaign, the party will interrogate Tajana and try to learn more about the mysterious Riviel Jassimir. They seem to have finally gotten the upper hand--what will they do with that power? Until next time, happy gaming!

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Music by Culture in My Homebrew Setting

When you go about creating a homebrew world, I recommend delving into every element of life within your world so you can get a real sense of what life is like there. I've offered peeks into the mythology, literature, superstitions, naming conventions, common sayings, and architecture of my world as a way to simultaneously illustrate what life is like there, show you the kind of worldbuilding you can do, and work out these details for myself. When I started writing on this site, I had a working idea of what these domains were like, but nowhere near the level of detail I now have surrounding many facets of life. Today, I want to break down an idea that's dear to me: music. For my profile on each race's music, I will describe the most common themes, the instruments used, a well-known song, and a notable musician or group of musicians. 

The Importance of Reviewing Last Session

Your campaign is going well, and you're picking up after a little break between sessions. Everyone sits down to play, but something is off. The players can't remember exactly where you left off, nor can they recall the fine details that made last session so special. Now the prospect of picking up where you left off is something of a problem. The classic solution to this problem is the best solution: we need to take notes. But what kind of notes you take is an vital question, and this guide will help you to create session notes that allow you and your players to start right where you left off without issue. 

The first choice you need to make is how you're going to record your notes. A physical notebook or a digital document both work very well, but if you have another method in mind, use it so long as it doesn't interfere with the purpose of the note-taking in the first place. I used to use a paper notebook for my notes when I played in-person games because I find a notebook is less distracting than a computer with its portals to anything and everything (all of the time). But since the beginning of the pandemic and the rise of online gaming, I've been using my computer. Specifically, I have a google doc for any campaign I run, and I used it to both plan and record notes for my campaigns. 

The next step is a simple one as well--you want to determine the extent to which you will record events. Obviously you want to include major events like the completing of a quest or the death of a major NPC, and you wouldn't include an out-of-character argument about the best way to handle a situation, but the in-between areas are the question we'll have to answer. Generally, I use a single question to decide what to record: Might this event have later consequences? It's really that simple. 

When I say "consequences," what I mean is that knowing about the specific events that unfolded previously would guide the flow of events in the future. I'll use an example from my mystery campaign: the following is the notes I took for the most recent session of that campaign:

After rising at Ais’ in the morning, you made plans and headed for Cogswagon’s. Cogwagon demonstrated the Biometric Scanner, and Izzunech took over Ais. Montana covered for Ais, pretending she just needed coffee, which worked on Cogswagon. She explained witnessing a chaos storm and asked you to buy her a diamond to complete the Weather Controller. Montana resisted, suggesting that she conquer her fear of the outside world and buy it herself, causing a standoff which ended in Beor carrying Montana to the door. Montana played a sultry song, causing a man to kiss a stranger, who slapped him, and Beor punched him out. You went to the leatherworker at the marketplace and designed your guitar case and hammer holster. You went to Cuff Jewelers, where you bought an appropriate diamond (energy transmitting) for Cogswagon, were shown a beautiful Ehlonna statue, and Beor commissioned a new holy symbol, a Fharlanghn guitar pick for Montana, and horn adornments for Ais. A chaos storm struck, and Beor lost all memory of his past for 9 minutes, during which Montana and Ais tried to teach Beor who he was and their situation (also Montana lied that they were best friends and that both of their names were Beor). Slowly, Beor’s memories came back, his whole life flashing before him at once. You headed to the abandoned shack and found a locked door, which Beor smashed open. You found the way to the secret basement, where Beor turned into a dog and confirmed that Tajana had slept on the bedroll there. You picked through the scroll cases and noticed the building was on fire; you lifted the floor and magically unlocked the door to emerge to a worried crowd. Among the crowd was Nyril, who said that most of the business’s employees quit when Dirk St. Patrick told them of your deeds. Montana used hair from Tajana’s bedroll to scry, seeing her riding in an elevator, then agreeing to “stop them” before leaving town. Ais turned the three of you invisible.

These are my notes as I typed them with no changes. There are a number of things worth commenting on here. One of the first things you'll notice is that I have written this account in the past tense and addressed it specifically to the players. This means that I can simply read this account without having to make any changes. In previous sessions, I had my post-game write-ups in mind and then had to improvise the correct conjugations and other linguistic changes as I read aloud, which is challenging for a person with dyslexia. So I shifted it and wrote my notes with the review of last session as my primary concern. 

You'll also notice that I'm very brief with my notes. Let's look at the first sentence: "After rising in Ais' in the morning, you made plans and headed for Cogswagon's." This relatively brief sentence establishes quiet a lot. We know the time (morning), the place (Ais' house), the who (the party), and the what (making plans and heading for Cogswagon's place). Your notes don't have to be so economical in terms of words, but keep in mind that you'll be reading your notes to the players next session--to keep them engaged, you want the review of notes to balance detail and brevity. Because this particular session was especially full of events and fine details (like specific custom items commissioned by the players), I ended up with about 150% the amount of notes I normally do. But despite the lengthiness of the notes, they do accomplish what I need. That leads us to a distinction:

There are your notes to keep you reminded of what is happenings, and then there are the notes that you will share with your players. In the case of the notes I have pasted above, I would probably clean up the account a bit. It works well for my notes so that I know specific information, but I don't need to remind the party of the more specific and non-vital details. Namely, I would shorten up the list of things purchased at the jeweler's--a simple "You went to the jewelers and purchased a diamond for Cogswagon and custom items for the rest of you" would work just fine. Changes like this affect the ultimate version of the notes I read to my players; a copy-pasted version of your own notes cleaned up will be the easiest way to do this. Ultimately, I recommend shooting for a set of notes that takes about one minute to read; any less, and you're probably skipping important details, and any more, and you're probably getting too granular (although of course there are exceptionally eventful or uneventful sessions, so adjust per your best judgment). 

My favorite part of the process comes when the next session begins. Normally, my players are chatting and goofing around, sharing plans for the session at times. As we settle in for the business of actually playing, I dig into what I call the "Last time on . . ." I'll start it off with a dramatic voice: "Last time on the mystery campaign . . ." and lead into the notes I prepared from the last session. This accomplishes a number of positive goals. First and foremost, it aligns everyone's thinking--now we're leaving social banter behind and delving into the heart of the game. It also catches everyone up--the game may be picking up right where you left off, but in real life, it's been a week or more, and everyone needs a moment to catch up. And this refreshing of the memory is not just for the story events; I cannot tell you how many times I've shared the players' plans from the previous session and been met with cries of "Oh yeah! I was gonna do that." The notes review gets everyone on the same page. 

But the notes also allow you as GM to assert some control over the scenario. Let's say that your players have been skillfully evading dealing with some element of your story. Maybe they're caught up in some other project or knowingly avoiding something they know is trouble. You can gently add some pressure to the party by adding the scenario to your notes via some trivial event. By way of example, in the mystery campaign, the players indicated some interest in speaking with a business owner--Birt Wizzoom--a few sessions ago. Wizzoom, I decided, has some interesting information about the mercenary that the party is tracking, and I want the party to go and talk to him. So when I provided my most recent recap of the previous session, I ended by saying, "And last time we met, you indicated that you were interested in speaking with Cogswagon, investigating the abandoned shack, and interrogating Birt Wizzoom." I'm pretty far from demanding that my players go speak with the man, but I'm also applying some gentle pressure to move things in that direction. It's just a small trick that can guide players under the right conditions.

Keeping notes on campaign events is pretty crucial--you can only do your best planning when you know the details that came before, and if you want to share your campaign like I do here on this site, you will require some note-taking. And once you do start keeping notes, not only will your writing improve, but as I've shown here, there's also considerable benefits even from sharing a boiled down version of those notes with your players. So try a "last time on . . ." and see if it sparks more enjoyable gaming. At worst, it will bore your players for one minute, and at best, it can tie everything together in a cohesive way. Sounds worth trying to me. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a profile on music in my homebrew setting, an argument for convenient storytelling, and how to write a murder mystery one-shot. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Mystery Campaign Session Notes 15

Last time in the mystery campaign, the party hit the market and investigated Seven Fifteen, a corporate espionage agent. They planned to check into the abandoned shack in the marketplace that was associated with the mercenary Tajana. This time, they hit the market again and investigate the shack. Read on for the full account of the fifteenth session of the mystery campaign. 

After rising at Ais' house in the morning, the party made plans for the day and headed over to Cogswagon's lab to check in. Cogswagon took them inside and showed them the newest fruit of her labors: the repaired Biometric Scanner. After a demonstration of its capacities, which include indicating whether someone is lying, Izzunech took over Ais. Montana covered for Ais, pretending that she hadn't had enough coffee that morning, and Cogswagon bought it. Then Cogswagon explained that she had witnessed a chaos storm terrorize a few people in the market and turned her attention to rebuilding her Weather Controller to turn the storms off. She asked that the party fetch her a diamond for the machine in order to complete it. Montana balked at this, countering that Cogswagon should just go to the market herself. Something of an argument unfolded: Cogswagon said her agoraphobia kept her from going outside, Montana believed she could conquer it if she tried, and Beor wanted Montana to accept that Cogswagon couldn't go outside. In the end, Beor carried Montana to the door. 

Back outside and on the way to the market, Montana began to play a sultry song. (Out of game, he said that he wanted to be playing "Careless Whisper" by George Michael.) Because of an exceptional roll, he played so well that a random person in the crowd was overcome and kissed a nearby unsuspecting stranger. The stranger slapped the man, and Beor wound up and punched the man unconscious. The crowd dispersed when the song ended, and the crowd showered the party with coins. 

They headed back to the leatherworker and commissioned a few custom items: Beor had a hammer holster made, and Montana bought a guitar case. The process involved the hiring of a spellcaster who used shaping spells to create stand-in items of wood and stone for the guitar and hammer respectively so that the party could keep their items. 

Then it was off to Cuff Jewelers, a small jewelry store near the market. Inside, they bought a proper diamond for Cogswagon's Weather Controller--one cut for transmitting energy. Beor also asked to see a number of other items, among which were a beautiful statue of Ehlonna made from precious gems. Beor commissioned a custom holy symbol of Ehlonna, a gold-and-silver guitar pick in the shape of Fharlanghn's symbol for Montana, and an elaborate series of gold-and-ruby chains and clasps as decorations for Ais' horns (ahornments, if you will). 

The party left the shop, headed for the abandoned shack, and a chaos storm struck. Beor was suddenly unable to recall any information from before the strike, including his name and where he was. For nine minutes, Montana and Ais tried to explain to Beor who he was and how they know each other, peppering in untrue details about how close they are as a group; Montana even claimed that both he and Beor were named Beor, which caused ample confusion. A few memories came back to Beor slowly, and then all at once, quite overwhelming him. After a moment of recovery, Beor was ready to carry one. 

The group arrived at the abandoned shack and found a heavy padlock on the only door in. Beor smashed the lock, and they went inside to find a small room empty except for a few empty shelves. After some searching, Montana found a seam in the flooring which was connected to a wire which fed through a pully system and lifted half the floor to reveal a staircase leading down to a larger room. Inside that room, the party found a recently-used bedroll, six scroll cases, and a box of candles. Inside the scroll cases were spell scrolls (Chain Lightning, Mall Healing Word, Geas), maps of mining operations in the mountains nearby, blackmail dossiers on four members of the Above, and a pair of letters between George Turnbuckle and Hildy Analeth. Beor turned into a hunting dog and used his sense of smell to confirm that Tajana had slept here. Montana took a few stray hairs. Soon, they noticed that smoke was pouring into the room--the house above was on fire. If they stayed there, they would suffocate as all the oxygen burned. Using Ais' resistance to fire damage, they managed to lift the floor, magically open the locked door, and rush outside to safety. 

Outside the burning shack was a crowd. People grew animated when it was revealed that people had been inside the burning building. A few good Samaritans came to help, but the party was fine. Nyril was also in the crowd. He was relieved the party was fine, but disappointed to tell them that two of the business' healers had quit. A private investigator named Dirk St. Patrick had shown up at the business and told the employees that Montana had killed his son, Beor had killed his wife, and Ais was possessed by a demon. Two healers had quit in disgust, but Nyril didn't believe St. Patrick, so he had stayed. The party doubled down, insisting that the stories were lies and resolving to seek out the healers to set things right. 

Montana then used the hair from Tajana to scry her. He witnessed her riding an elevator up to a tower, where she met with Riviel Jassimir. Tajana explained that her cover was burned and she was leaving town, but Jassimir insisted that they still had unfinished business. Tajana argued again and again that no amount of money would convince her to stay, but she changed her mind when Jassimir produced two bulging bags of platinum pieces and threatened Tajana with some unspoken secret. When Tajana accepted the bags, Jassimir told her to "stop them" before she left town. Then Tajana entered the elevator back down, and Montana's scrying ended as she walked out into the city. 

The party felt ready to take Tajana on but was unsure of how to follow her. Ais placed a hand on her compatriots, cast "Invisibility," and we decided to pick up from there next time. Sorry for the cliffhanger! Sometimes, you just have to call it. 

A quick note about Dirk St. Patrick's return this session: I'm not really a "mean DM" at all. I'd rather give interesting problems to my players to see how they solve them than stump the players. But after the jokes about how toothless Dirk St. Patrick had become, my mind started going. "Okay, so he can't reveal their secrets to each other. And he knows how much they love their business. Why not have him strike at the employees?" Now, the party will have to work with the employees who quit or find replacements, which creates its own story angles. It also makes Dirk a threat again--what if he spreads word of that and the disguises to the Above? Before now, Dirk was a way to put pressure on the party dynamic. But since the party is completely integrated now, Dirk can be repurposed to threaten their interests in new ways, which also creates new story angles. I personally like the idea of the party losing a lot of their support from the people they've met as they approach the final chapter, which would increase the drama of facing off against the final boss even more. We'll see. 

That's all for now. Next time in the mystery campaign, the players will hatch plans to deal with Tajana. I certainly don't know what is going to come next, and I think the players don't either. So you'll just have to tune in next time to find out how it all plays out. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Snakes on a Plane One-Shot

Some movie strive to play on your heartstrings. Others try to impress you with big ideas. Some want to make you laugh or be afraid or feel alone. And some movies just want spectacle. Snakes on a Plane is this last kind of movie. The title tells you everything you need to know: there's a plane, and there are snakes on it. And while some games also vary in aim--some emotional, some intellectual, some instinctual--spectacle is not a bad thing to base a game on. In this one-shot, the players will have to survive a deadly plane ride, inspired by a movie so bad it's almost good. 

I normally aim to create one-shots that are pretty family-friendly so that anyone can play them. But for this one-shot, I allowed a bit of profanity but generally kept the rest of it clean. To play this one-shot, just follow the narration and directions below, and you can give your players the plane ride of their lives. 

How to Develop Places of Interest in a Setting

Good tabletop game writing answers all of the interrogatives: who, what, when, where, why, and the elusive how. Games are almost always clear about who (the players and the featured NPCS), the what (the quest), and the why (the reason behind the quest). Players themselves provide the how--it's the method they choose for progressing. The when is rarely a real question--it's answered by the context of the campaign and usually not given much thought. But the where! The where is a question that usually gets relegated to a secondary concern. It doesn't have to be, though. With a little bit of work, you can turn the places in a campaign into integral and interesting elements of the game. I call these developed locations "places of interest," parts of the game that double as settings and characters in their own right (a character in the sense that New York is kind of a character in movies about New York). Read on for a guide on how to develop a place of interest (or several) for your campaign. 

A word about the inspiration for this guide: recently, I created a tabletop game involving time travel and historical settings. When designing the game, I began with the where. I chose places (and times, but the time was informed by the place), and my first step in filling out the game was to create places. People came afterward, as did motivations and timelines. The individual locations in each place came to be not just significant locations in and of themselves, but also anchors that kept the places alive. So I want to apply that design to other tabletop games, and the guide below will show you how to do so. 

The first step in designing a place of interest can vary. Personally, I recommend beginning with a purpose. You may derive this purpose from a narrative concern--you need a place for the BBEG to hide out, or a place for the player characters to make a discovery, or a place that is chaotic and filled with people for a dramatic reveal. Or you might pick a place that serves a function in the community it's a part of--it serves a common utilitarian purpose, or it expresses something unique about the place it's in, or it is a regular hangout place for a particular faction of people. Any of these options are good starting points, and other ideas not listed here will, work too. What matters is that you have a grain of meaning to begin with that you can spin into a pearl. 

Once you have your purpose in mind, it's time to select a place that suits it. For the purposes of this guide, I'll complete each step with an example. Per this example, our developed place of interest will both express something unique about the place it's in and be a faction hangout. The unique aspect of the community it represents is that the town is built across a river, and rather than build a bridge, the city has planted a massive tree in the center of the river and strategically cut it as it grew--now there is a bridge across the river formed by the trunk of this tree, which has been cut into in its branches to create homes and businesses. So this tree is the center of the city and one of the more prestigious places to live and work. It also serves as a faction hangout. The most elite merchants who have businesses in this tree have formed something of an alliance to keep competing businesses out of the tree. They also want to grow the city around it at large, so they fund business ventures in the surrounding city. Although there is official governmental authority in the city, the real seat of power is these businesspeople. 

We can add a name to the place at any point in the process, so I'll pick one now. I want it to reflect the natural profile of the tree but also the power that it holds. For bonus points, something that reflects its purpose as a bridge would be good too. I'm going to go with "Great Oakbridge," which is good enough for my purposes in illustrating the process. 

The next step is in filling out the other functions of the place. Great Oakbridge acts as bridge, apartment, business complex, and base of operations for the elite merchants. But how does everyday life progress there? We know that because the location acts as a bridge, there are a good number of people who pass through every day. This could create safety concerns for residents, so I will add that there are only businesses on the bridge-level of the tree; in order to access the houses built into it, people must climb a staircase which spirals around the tree as it ascends. This trend should bear out as the tree's heights are reached; almost all the businesses are lower on the tree to make them easier to get to. Thus, the tree is divided more or less in half--businesses below and homes above. The most wealthy and elite of the merchants on the tree also have homes higher up, and the higher the home, the more prestigious. 

We also know that the elite merchants use the tree as a base of operations. But real estate on the tree is precious, and a dedicated space for meetings would be impractical. (Other residents of the city might also complain that livable space is dedicated to being empty most of the time.) So we can determine that the meetings take place in the personal spaces of the elite merchants. Let's say that these merchants take turns hosting the others in their respective businesses for the meetings. Obviously, this would not happen during business hours, so these meetings must happen either very early in the morning or later at night. I want these merchants to be industrious, and an early morning meeting feels more in line with that vibe, so we'll say that the first few floors of Great Oakbridge are alight with activity early in the morning before the first shoppers are out and about. 

Now that we know about the place a bit, it's time to attribute some characters to it. You might take an NPC or two who would fit the place and add them, and you can also create characters to fill the place out. I recommend a mixture of both. For the purposes of this example, let's create a few characters: 

• Violet Higgins - One of the elite merchants vying for control of the merchant group, she owns a business that sells common goods in a kind of expanded general store. Because she has irons in so many different fires, she is one of the more active members of the group, pushing for general business rights. She is aggressive in terms of business strategy and is in a bit of a rivalry with Gregory Illinel, a producer of finished goods. 
• Gregory Illinel - A new addition to the elite merchant group, he oversees several small companies which create specialized goods and resells them to merchants. Illinel is regarded by the other elite merchants as something of an outsider--he is the only one in the group to be primarily involved in resale rather than engaging in vertical integration like the others. He is somewhere cautious, and he regards the rest of the elite merchant group as potential assets he needs to convince of his value. 
• Janice Hornblower - The only artisan to be a part of the elite merchant group, she creates the city's finest metal goods. As the expert smith in the city, she has gained a following from adventurers for her high quality work. She has recently organized a form of apprenticing, charging for her tutelage--many of the regions best smiths trained under her. She represents the interests of labor, and is often outvoted by the other merchants. 

Already from these three characters, we get plenty of story opportunities. Violet Higgins can be used as something of a nemesis as she makes business interests more powerful than individual people; she might also be a strong ally if the party is looking to establish their own business. Gregory Illinel might provide quests to work with individual craftspeople; he might also be empowered to help growing businesses in the city over established businesses. The rivalry between the two could be ripe for a story about a power struggle amongst the city's most powerful people. Janice Hornblower could be the heart of a story about empowering laborers and craftspeople; she might be the center of a quest to change the business strategies in the city at large. These are just possibilities, and there will be more if we look closer. The important thing to recognize, though, is that these personalities came out of the place we built. 

We might then expand. We can do so in a number of ways. We could expand from the place: if the city in question has this combination bridge/apartment/shopping center, what other places would be necessary to serve the city. We still have lots of roles to fill: religious centers, governmental centers, cultural sites, and many more. We might make an individualized version of each of there: a temple that caters to all the good-aligned deities with considerable freedom of worship, a modest mayor's office that is overwhelmed by public demands for action, a formidable library of literature and philosophy from every culture. These places add complexity to the city and make it seem like a living place. 

We could also expand from the people: where else might Violet Higgins spend her time? Certainly she would check in on her various business concerns--we can develop those. She regularly visits creators of rope, textiles, and clothing at one location (a textile factory run by local laborers); she works with a shipping company (perhaps her own) to ensure timely deliveries (Higgins Deliveries is dedicated to transporting only her wares); she checks in at the city temple in order to reach out to the city's underprivileged with offers of work (she considers it good business practice to hire people who are formally aligned with good behavior). We might do the same for the other two people, following these steps for each place. 

And then we might expand from considering the opposite of what we've crafted so far. If the city has a good-aligned temple, a modest mayor's office, and a formidable library, what else might they have? Perhaps the less-than-good residents of the city have their own temple for evil-aligned deities, and it is carefully hidden away from the public. Maybe the mayor is not really the most powerful person in town, and the former mayor (now retired but not uninvolved in the city's progress) has been pulling the strings unseen. Mayhaps the library is so high-minded that common people have little use for it, instead preferring a local book collector's array of practical texts. Now we can develop these places further, and the result will be a complex mixture of places that represent all walks of life. 

The opposite approach also works for people. Let's consider Janice Hornblower. Her opposite is someone who works hard but hasn't broken through to success, someone who is more focused on their community than on themselves. They are not an expert like her, but they do have considerable skills in organizing people. Perhaps as Janice Hornblower uses her business expertise to advocate somewhat for laborers, our foil to her is a labor organizer who doesn't feel she works hard enough for common people. Now, Janice Hornblower is caught in a bind between the labor organizer and the other elite merchants, forcing her to pick a side. 

The best thing about the opposite approach is automatic conflict. In the examples from expanding based on place, we see that immediately, the good-aligned temple is in conflict with the evil-aligned temple. Similarly, the mayor and former mayor are locked in a struggle, as are the libraries of high knowledge and practical knowledge. One thing I have learned concretely about running games is that players pick up on conflict and almost always insert themselves into it. But creating places and people that oppose each other, we not only represent more than one side of a story, but we also give the players opportunities to assert themselves in the gameworld. 

In the end, your developed place should include what happens there (both in terms of its intended purpose and what people actually use it for), who frequents the location, and a counterpart to it (usually an opposite like we built, and sometimes a shade of grey when the story calls for it). What matters is that you have a complete sense of the place. And you want to communicate as much of this to your players as is reasonable. You don't want to drown the players in information, but you definitely want them to have more than a name to go off of. 

As your players explore your world, they'll begin to notice that places in your campaign are more than just a scene for the drama to unfold. This in turn leads them to investigate locations more completely, and you as a GM will be in a position to depict the other locations in your game more fully. And of course, remember to include the details you brainstorm. I for one am guilty of occasionally coming up with all manner of interesting detail and then neglecting to share all of that information with the players. It's in my head, so they must get it too, right? I wish that were the case. You can get away with more description of places than other elements of the game, so really show your players what a place is like. 

The amount of work you need to put into the overall process depends on your goals. For a small settlement that won't be a major part of the campaign, I recommend developing at least 3 places of interest. For a mid-size city that will be visited a few times, at least 5 places of interest should do it. But if you're going to base a whole campaign in one city (as I have before, and as I do in the game that inspired this guide), you want to get very granular. In my custom TTRPG, I developed 12 places of interest for each setting. That's quite a lot, and I don't think you need to go into that level of detail for any campaign. But I will say this: the more you know about a place, and the more complex and varied that place is, the richer it is as a setting for both you and your players. Think about it like sightseeing: would you rather go to a city which boasts 3 interesting places, or one that claims over 10? Give your players cause to get excited about exploring!

That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot based on the movie Snakes on a Plane, the value of reviewing last session's events, and a profile on music in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

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