Mörk Borg Play Report and Review: Rotblack Sludge

After having owned a copy of Mörk Borg for over a year, I finally had a chance to run a game. We played most of Rotblack Sludge. Hopefully we can play again and finish the adventure.

First, a small diversion into how this game came to be. I bought a copy of Mörk Borg at PAX Unplugged last year. Since then, I've tried multiple times to get my online group to try it out during lulls in our weekly D&D games. For some reason, it never came to fruition.

This year, I went to PAX Unplugged with a few of my IRL friends, and they were intrigued by how every other indie-type RPG zine was either compatible with Mörk Borg or Mothership (and how many games were spinoffs of Mörk Borg - CY_BORG, Pirate Borg, etc.). It also helps that all the stuff looks cool. And Mörk Borg is fun to say. It stays with you.

After a month or so of talking about playing, interrupted by the holidays, we finally got together to try it out. I refreshed my memory as to the system and its introductory adventure, Rotblack Sludge, earlier that day. Simplicity is definitely one of the game's strengths.

Mörk Borg has reminded me of the power of a physical TTRPG product. I already said that Mörk Borg stuff looks cool, and that makes potential players interested in learning more about it. The look of Mörk Borg also helps to communicate its tone. I can say "This is a Swedish doom metal RPG. It's like a really simple version of D&D but the world is ending and everyone and everything sucks." Or, I can hold up the book, flip through the pages, and say, "This is the vibe." It works.

It also helps when the physical product is a little book I can hold in one hand. I've grown accustomed to running D&D using only a computer because I feel like I need a computer to run modern D&D. There are at least two - and arguably, three or more - books that I need to have at hand to play 5e, and they are big. They're also organized poorly, with multiple sections of multiple books needing to be referenced simultaneously. And the players all need to share the one, too. I'd much rather use an online tool, where the spells in the enemy wizard's statblock are linked to the spell descriptions, which are in turn linked to the descriptions of the conditions they impose.

So nowadays, if I want to play D&D in person, I'm probably bringing a laptop and a PHB for the players to share. That's the equivalent of two textbooks. Mörk Borg is one little book. I also brought along Mothership and Old School Essentials as options, and Mörk Borg occupied the least space in my backpack by far. That has value.

We started by randomly generating characters. I got a bit confused, and had the players start by rolling equipment, weapons, and armor, then asked them whether they wanted to play regular characters or characters with classes. This was a mistake, because characters with classes have different methods of determining starting equipment, weapons, and armor.

The way I presented the choice was that classes have special abilities and more specialized ability scores - some will be higher than a normal character's and some will be lower. Normal characters have more average stats but can roll for higher stats on two of them. The system could do a better job communicating what is the advantage of playing a classless character. My players all wanted to have a class because they wanted special abilities (which they all promptly forgot about).

The page describing the character creation process says that classed characters follow their own instructions for rolling equipment, but that's not really true. The Fanged Deserter starts with a unique item, as does the Wretched Royalty, and the Occult Herbmaster starts with two decoctions. Otherwise, the classes just get silver pieces and abilities. I had already made the mistake of having the players roll for equipment as normal, so I left it as is.

The character creation rules have the player roll for equipment first, then ability scores. I found this odd because quantities of certain items are determined by ability scores (i.e., "Presence + 4 torches", a "lantern with oil for Presence +6 hours", etc.). I don't see any reason why abilities can't be rolled first.

We ended up with the following characters:

• Daeru: A Gutterborn Scum in massive debt with a sneak attack ability (Coward's Job)
• Karg: An Esoteric Hermit with a drinking problem and an enchanting harp (Bard of the Undying)
• Urvarg: An Occult Herbmaster who had an illicit affair with a member of the nobility (with Fernor's Philtre and Hyphos' Enervating Snuff)
• Vresi: A Fanged Deserter nihilist with a loud mouth, a problem with authority, and a bag of Wizard Teeth

The players loved this character creation process. They were engaged from the moment they rolled for their characters' names, and were locked in once Urvarg started with four monkeys that love him but ignore him. The process took up a big chunk of our play time, but it might have been the most fun we had all night.

On to Rotblack Sludge. The characters were prisoners of the Shadow King, scheduled to be executed for their various flaws (debt, alcoholism, philandering, and sedition). Luckily for them, the Shadow King's heir was kidnapped and taken to the Accursed Den. They would be free if they found him and brought him back.

This adventure requires some massaging. For such a simple introductory scenario, I really wish the authors had done a bit more legwork to connect the disparate elements. Before play I took some mental notes as to how I'd fix some things. Some SPOILERS for Rotblack Sludge below.

First, there's no reason why the players can't just lamb it as soon as they're released from the Shadow King's dungeon. I said that the masked Seer had put a geas spell on them that would melt their brains if they neglected their duties. Simple enough. Classic plot device.

The bearded man in the Dining Hall is a fun encounter but doesn't really do anything for me. I decided that he was one of the necromancers that had taken in Fletcher as a child. He was still catatonic, but had moments of lucidity during which he could give some exposition about the dungeon, Fletcher's plans, the Gutworm, etc. I wanted to preserve the encounter's function as a trick/trap while making it feel like less of a time-waster.

The skeletons on the pillar in the Rotblack Sludge are pointless. It's interesting I guess, but it's also so odd that I knew my players would fixate on it. So, I decided that Fletcher does not yet have control of the Gutworm, and the skeletons' music is what keeps it relatively subdued. The players could, for example, attempt to tamper with the skeletons, but this would unleash the worm.

Lastly, Lesdy. She "is trying to turn the Gutworm against Fletcher". Great! How is she trying to do that? How is the worm controlled? "She seeks the tunnels and caves deep beneath Rotblack Sludge". What tunnels and caves? How does Lesdy plan to get there? The sludge burns anyone who is in it! Also, Fletcher hates her but "can't fit through the tunnel" to the Greenhouse. What? Can't he send in the guards to kill her? Well no, you see - the crooked guards in the Guard Room "follow Fletcher's every word" but "don't care about Lesdy". That's convenient! Inconvenient for Fletcher, I guess.

Also, Fletcher is using the kidnapped heir as leverage to "pressure the Shadow King into getting rid of Lesdy for good." So Fletcher and Lesdy are like, colleagues? They're agents of the Shadow King or something? And Fletcher would rather kidnap the Shadow King's son than just like, order his guards to go kill Lesdy? Like, what is meant to be going on here?

I hate to be a plot-brained idiot who can't understand anything unless its explained to me but like, I can easily come up with a disjointed scenario with a bunch of incoherent ideas myself. When I run modules it's because I don't want to have the cognitive load of figuring out how the disparate ideas of a scenario fit together. I want the author to have figured that out for me so I can focus on running the game with minimal prep!

So, here's how I made sense of all of it. Fletcher and Lesdy are villainous colleagues. They have no real affiliation with the Shadow King. They both want to control the Gutworm because if there was a giant worm and you could potentially control it, you probably would want to. Lesdy and her acolytes spend their time in the Greenhouse brewing concoctions which grant some measure of power over the worm, but the worm will only truly obey someone of noble blood. So, they kidnapped the Shadow King's heir. Both Lesdy and Fletcher are grooming the heir to obey them so that they can be the worm's true master, while secretly plotting to cut each other out.

There. That took a paragraph and could easily be inserted at the beginning of the adventure in a "what's going on?" blurb.

Without going into the nitty-gritty details of the session: the characters fought some skeletons, smooth-talked past some guards, fought some dogs, stole some gems, fled from the Gutworm, and had a tense negotiation with Lesdy.

We wrapped up the session there and "leveled up" ("Getting Better" in Mörk Borg). Normally I'd wait until after they finished the scenario, but I'm not sure if we will. They seem interested in playing again, but I wanted to finish the session by showing off the progression system. I know level-less systems are all the rage now, but I appreciate that Mörk Borg has a very simple system for character improvement.

Combat was fast and easy. I made liberal use of reaction rolls in pretty much every encounter. Karg's harp (which adds d4 to reaction rolls) felt particularly overpowered, but I probably allowed him to use it too often (or I was using reaction rolls too often).

If I were to do it again, I'd start new players off with classless characters. The classes have just one randomly determined ability each. In Karg's case, it was a character-defining ability, but everyone else forgot their ability even existed. It just added needless complexity to the character creation process with very little payoff in-game.

The system really "gets out of the way" and allows the referee freedom to riff on what's there (and what's not). Of course, I have a decade plus of DMing experience at this point so I know how to take those simple rules and apply them in a versatile way.

It's a fantastic game for players new to RPGs. My players said they really appreciated that the random character creation "took the guesswork out of making a character" and that it was cool that the rules were simple enough to learn as we went along. Which like...yes! It is so nice to just be able to make a character without having to know the rules first, then learn the rules by actually playing.

I'm optimistic that we'll be coming back to this one. Here's to möre Borg in 2025!

First Impressions: Mothership 1e Deluxe Set

This is not a review. I have not played Mothership. I hope to soon. This post is simply my first impressions after reading the four core rulebooks included in the boxed set (Player's Survival Guide, Warden's Operation Manual, Shipbreaker's Toolkit, and Unconfirmed Contact Reports). After this, I hope to run some adventures (starting with those included in the deluxe set), review those, and then finally author a more informed review of the system as a whole.

Mothership is very popular right now. It caught my interest because everyone is talking about it. They often review Mothership modules on Between Two Cairns. I went to PAX Unplugged and 90% of the non-boardgame and non-D&D stuff were module-zines "compatible with Mörk Borg/Mothership". I already had Mörk Borg (and perhaps will write about that some other time), so I decided to check out Mothership next.

I got the Deluxe Set for Christmas and, speaking purely of aesthetics, it's awesome. The box looks cool. The Warden's screen is the kind of overwhelming presentation of raw information that it should be. It comes with a double-sided poster map thing (which, admittedly, I have no idea how I'm supposed to use, if at all) and little cardboard standup miniatures with cool character and monster art. The box itself (the "Warden Containment System") is a great place to roll dice.

And the books are great. The black and white aesthetic of the rulebooks alongside the neon of the modules is eye-catching. I love that I can carry all eight booklets around with me in a little stack that fits in one hand. I was so excited to open this box, spread everything out on my table, take a picture, and share it online. 

The game's presentation at a very superficial level can draw new players in. D&D gets new players based on name recognition, ignorance about the alternatives, and mistaken assumptions that it's the best place to start. D&D books do not look cool. The majority of Mothership zines I've seen do.

Player's Survival Guide

In case it isn't obvious, this is Mothership's PHB. It's pretty good!

I love that it begins with an explanation of the character sheet and step-by-step instructions for randomly generating a character. I've written before about how I favor random character creation. In a game that my friends and I have already played to death, like D&D, I find it helps veteran players break out of their comfort zones and try out different types of characters.

However, I favor random character creation even when playing D&D with new players. It makes character creation a game, and eases the burden of learning every character option and then weighing those options against the game's rules to make "optimal" decisions. With random character creation, new players can focus on the fun of discovering who their character is, and worry about learning the rules and how they affect that character later. This is a great way to introduce players to a new game.

Mothership even has randomized equipment loadouts based on the character's class, which is great, because starting a new game by going shopping is a great way to kill the momentum.

The classes (Marine, Android, Scientist, and Teamster) are thematic and unique to the system and the genre of fiction the game is attempting to emulate. I do wonder if there's enough there to distinguish the Android from the Scientist. 

Several reviews of Mothership have pointed out that it isn't super clear what exactly Androids are or how they differ from humans (aside from not needing to breathe). My assumption is that they're most similar to Alien's synthetics. I imagine they can do all sorts of things a human can't which aren't accounted for in the game's rules. I anticipate that being a source of difficulty in play.

Aside from bonuses to stats and Saves and Wounds, classes are distinguished by their Trauma Response, which is a neat mechanic that again enforces the theme and the game's genre lineage. Marines make their allies afraid when they panic. Androids make people uneasy just by being around them. Scientists make people stressed when they lose it. Teamsters are less likely to panic. 

One thing that's strange is that Mothership's character creation process gives no insight to the character's personality. I'm sure the assumption is that creative players can come up with that sort of thing on their own, which is fair. But players new to RPGs may need some help getting into the headspace of someone other than themselves. And as I've already said, even new players can sometimes benefit from prompts that might encourage them to play a different kind of character than is typical for them.

I'm kind of shocked that the Deluxe Set doesn't include character sheets. The character sheet is really cool. It's available as a free download on Tuesday Knight Games' website. But I don't have a printer. I work from home. It would be sweet if the set had included at least four blank character sheets with which to get started. 

Luckily, there's the Mothership Companion, a free character creation app that has some other add-ons for things like ships. This is great because it includes descriptions of skills and equipment, which eliminates the need for new players to constantly reference the Survival Guide to find out what these things do. One can also use it to shop for new equipment, which means multiple players can do that during downtime without the need to share the one booklet.

The game's core mechanics revolve around Stat Checks, Saves, Stress, and Panic. 

Stress is weird. It accumulates each time a character fails a Stat Check or Save, but it can also be handed out automatically by the Warden, which seems to sometimes require a Fear Save but sometimes doesn't. Stress is relieved by resting in a safe place and making a special Rest Save using the character's worst Save. A character has Advantage on the Save if they have sex, drink or use drugs, pray, etc.

I'm a bit confused by resting. Mothership is a sci-fi horror RPG. In my experience with the genre, the protagonists don't usually rest once things start to get stressful. Horror is often defined by urgency. Perhaps resting is meant to be done in between scenarios, when the characters don't have time or money to take Shore Leave? (The prospect of an ongoing Mothership campaign is a separate concern I'll get to later.)

Shore Leave is downtime. It costs time and money. During Shore Leave, characters can convert accumulated stress into improved Saves. Accumulating Stress can kill the character or cause them to behave sub-optimally, but it's also how they advance. It creates a delicate balancing act where players might want to accrue Stress during an adventure, but not so much Stress that their character has a heart attack.

It is weird that Shore Leave can only improve Saves. Mothership is a level-less system where advancement takes the form of equipment and relationships, but I'll admit I am something of a "numbers go up" man. There is an optional rule in the Warden's Operation Manual (I'll get to those) that allows both Stats and Saves to be improved during Shore Leave, which I'll probably use. 

Combat is pretty straightforward, though I did have some trouble understanding Armor Points at first. Wounds are pretty deadly, and I don't see how characters are meant to have a chance at surviving the ones that cause massive Bleeding. Does staunching the Bleeding require Expert Training in Field Medicine? It seems weird to have a system where characters can take multiple Wounds before dying, but also where Wounds have a really good chance of outright killing the character anyway.

Death Saves are cool. The Warden puts a d10 in a cup and keeps the die roll covered until someone checks that character's vitals. I don't see why one couldn't simply wait to roll the Save at that time and forego the cup entirely, but I guess this is more dramatic. It seems like it would work well as a unique mechanic for the Warden to evoke when pitching the game to players.

That's all for the Survival Guide. It's a pretty good primer, with everything needed to start playing the game right away.

Warden's Operation Manual

This is Mothership's DMG, and it accomplishes way more in its 50-some pages than the new D&D DMG does in...however many pages that is.

There are two key elements to the Manual that make it distinctly a Mothership manual and not simply a generic "how to run an RPG" book: Survive, Solve, or Save and the TOMBS Cycle.

The Manual makes explicit the goal of the Warden: to put the players in a situation where they must decide to Survive the ordeal, Solve the mystery, or Save the day. They can do one or maybe two of those things, but not all three. 

I can immediately imagine every scenario starting out with a clock. Whenever the players advance towards one of these three goals, time ticks away on the remaining two. That's a great framework to base a scenario on. It is so helpful for the game to just come right out and say what its intention is.

The TOMBS Cycle describes the cycle of horror as represented in Mothership. TOMBS stands for Transgression (what is done that awakens the horror), Omens (the signs that herald the arrival of the horror), Manifestation (how the horror finally reveals itself), Banishment (how the horror is defeated or suppressed) and Slumber (how the horror goes dormant and eventually returns).

These elements of horror aren't unique to Mothership, but their expression here is. The TOMBS cycle isn't simply Horror 101 for Wardens. The first page of the book has a d20 table (rolled using percentile dice for some reason) listing examples of each element. There's also a table of themes, and two ten-entry lists of scenario types and settings.

Using these tables, I can see how I might build an adventure for Mothership. It's similar to how, if I were to prep an adventure for D&D, I might roll on a series of tables to generate a location and its history, then roll on another series of tables to determine what problem needs to be solved. From there, it's much easier to determine appropriate monsters, NPCs, puzzles, and the like. In this way, Mothership makes generating adventure ideas fairly simple.

The Manual is filled with lots of other good advice for running RPGs in general, but for someone like me who knows how to run a game but doesn't know how to run a Mothership game specifically, it is super helpful for the game to provide a bunch of tables I can roll on to generate an adventure that feels like Mothership. More RPGs need to include this sort of thing. (There is also a list of "campaign frames" later in the book - i.e., the player characters are colonists, mercenaries, truckers, etc. - but I found these less useful, which I'll touch on in a minute.)

Much of the book I could take or leave. There's solid advice for creating asymmetrical combat scenarios (with a numbered list of examples), puzzles (with a numbered list of examples), NPCs (with a cool diagram organizing NPC types along axes of Power and Helpfulness), keying maps, teaching the game, describing situations, adjudicating actions, and the like. I've just internalized most of that from years of playing games and reading blogs. But I get why it's there, and I'm sure new Wardens will find it helpful.

There's some advice about when to roll dice (when the stakes are high, the outcome is uncertain, the players don't have the right tools, the plan is bad, or the player wants to). Mothership takes a very OSR approach to rolling dice. That is, players should avoid it if they can, and Wardens should require it only when strictly necessary. After reading Dwiz's review, I will probably be inclined to have the players roll much more often than the Manual advises, since the whole Stress/Panic mechanic works off of rolling dice, and I really want to use that mechanic. 

There's more concrete Mothership-specific advice later on: how to map a star system, how much a job should pay, negotiating better rates, how to get a loan, and what to do if players want to save money or end up getting rich. There are optional rules ("Difficulty Settings"), an Appendix N, and tables for generating planets, settlements, ports, and factions. Most of this is solidly useful or interesting.

Overall the Warden's Operations Manual is a good book for Wardens new to Mothership specifically, and probably invaluable to those new to RPGs entirely.

Shipbreaker's Toolkit and Unconfirmed Contact Reports

I don't have as much to say about these, so I'll collapse them into one subsection. 

In Mothership, in my mind, ships are a means of transport as well as a "home base" of sorts (it is probably more accurate to describe the various ports where the players can take Shore Leave as the "home bases" of Mothership, but the characters' ship is where they will literally live for most of the game). They're also kind of like strongholds. And dungeons.

All that is to say that it's great that Mothership provides a book with examples of the different types of ships and their typical deck plans. The book also includes a deck plan key, tables with fuel costs for ship maneuvers, travel costs, refueling and resupply costs, ship upgrades and weapons, needed repairs, and a ship character sheet. That's a Hell of a lot more support than D&D provides for bastions!

It would be really easy for Mothership to say "You've seen Alien. You know what a ship is like!" It's really great that it goes the extra mile. (In the case of Androids it basically says "You've seen Alien. You know what Androids are like!")

I really like the look of the ships, too. They are bizarre shapes. To me, it's clear that they are assembled entirely in orbit and never, ever break a planet's atmosphere (even if some of the official modules include in the Deluxe Set don't seem to have gotten the memo - *cough*DeadPlanet*cough*).

Unconfirmed Contact Reports is Mothership's Monster Manual. At first glance, it has evocative art and compelling, unique ideas. The "monsters" presented are quintessentially Mothership: algorithms, CEOs, lost media, and creepypasta alongside more typical sci-fi horror fare. 

However...there just isn't much to do with these things. The information is brutally scant. It's well-written. It's interesting. It's unsettling the way a well-written creepypasta is unsettling. It has nothing to say about how a Warden might use these horrors in their game.

The very same TOMBS Cycle so helpfully outlined in the Warden's Operation Manual isn't even mentioned here. Every entry should include an acrostic poem that spells out TOMBS with a brief sentence for each part of the cycle!  

I bet it would be really cool to run an adventure in which the horror is a viral algorithm hellbent on keeping its existence a secret, but if I want to do that, I have to come up with all of it by myself. 

I would be better off randomly generating a horror using the TOMBS Cycle and then making up the Manifestation and its game statistics myself, which...Contact Reports also doesn't tell me how to do. There are five "quick horrors" described on the book's back cover (Anomaly, Brute, Guard, Hunter, and Swarm) which is a good jumping off point, but I wish there was more guidance as to like, how much damage something should do or how many wounds it should have. Maybe that's just my D&D brainrot talking.

It's a neat book. It might be inspiring for some. I don't really find it useful.

The Modules

I haven't read all of them yet. I'm about halfway through A Pound of Flesh and read Another Bug Hunt and Dead Planet. I hope to write reviews and/or play reports of each of them in the near future. 

First of all, I love that the Deluxe Set comes with four modules. Teach me how to play the game and then give me a bunch of official examples as to how it's done.

I love that they all have different vibes. Another Bug Hunt is an Aliens action-horror scenario. Dead Planet is a Dead Space scenario where the players are stuck in a bad place and have to figure out how to get out. A Pound of Flesh details a settlement/port the Warden can use for Shore Leave along with intrigue and adventure the players can get involved in there. Gradient Descent is, as I understand it, a megadungeon.

Another Bug Hunt seems like a great starting adventure, and I can't wait to run it. Dead Planet has some cool ideas but is super messy. Like, I have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to even get the scenario to make sense. A Pound of Flesh so far has a lot of potential to be really fun.

These modules are information-dense, but they're also kind of vague. Lots of big ideas that sound cool in an overview, but require a lot from the Warden to make them cohesive. In the modern fashion, descriptions of almost everything are terse bullet points that require the Warden to flesh them out with off-the-cuff details. In other words, the modules don't do a lot of the legwork. 

The modules also demonstrate how supplements like these can flesh out the base game. Dead Planet includes a derelict ship generator which can certainly be used in any Mothership adventure. A Pound of Flesh includes all the information on cybermods as well as a space station generator. Gradient Descent includes exploration procedures.

The layout and design of the modules is sick. The modules are so cool to look at. They're also sometimes extremely hard to read. Another Bug Hunt has white text on orange background. Dead Planet has white text on red background. A Pound of Flesh has white text on neon pink background. The text is so small. 

I'm red-green colorblind and I wear glasses. I have to hold these almost in front of my face and turn them so the light hits them at just the right angle so that I can read the text. Just stop using neon backgrounds with white text! The only reason I can imagine they did this is because it looks cool. That's not a good enough reason!

Reading Mörk Borg is a walk in the park compared to this. At least the text there is big and the colors are high contrast.

Hopefully, more to come on these modules in the future!

Putting It All Together

Despite griping about those last few things, I can't wait to play this game. My plan is to try running each of the four included modules to begin with. I'm going to try to make it a campaign.

Something that's always confounded me about horror RPGs is that I don't understand how they can even produce campaigns. Obviously, death looms large in horror. Of course, if everyone dies, it's game over. The players can still make all new characters and either try the scenario again or move onto the next one.

My issue is more with believability. Every (good) Alien movie is about Ripley. The alien follows her like an albatross. It refuses to let her live her life. Her struggles with it define her.

But it also kind of strains believability that she has to keep dealing with this alien every time she wakes up. It strains believability that the people from the first Jurassic Park keep managing to get stranded on the dinosaur island.

Yet those are scenarios where a single person or group of people interact with a single horror multiple times. They have a history with it. It's not hard to imagine that it keeps coming back to haunt them.

Rarer are the scenarios where a single group of people interact with multiple horrors over the course of their lives. The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural...

Returning to the campaign frames from the Warden's Operation Manual, how does one justify a group of space truckers, colonists, or miners continuously stumbling upon shoggoths and xenomorphs? They're not seeking them out. They're just profoundly, stupidly unlucky.

Here, I think being acclimated to the weird assumptions of D&D helps. Why does this one group of people keep going into horrible holes in the ground and risking their lives against murderous monsters? Because that's just kind of what they do. That's their job. They adventure.

A similar campaign frame could work for Mothership. They need to be a kind of adventurer - someone who needs or is obligated to seek out the unknown and risk their lives again and again. I plan to have my players be debt slave "fixers" for "the Company". They're a specialized team of spacers who go on classified missions to investigate strange events and protect the Company's interests against threats to the bottom line.

The Company connects everything. I just have to figure out what the connection is. That, I think, it a pretty decent way to run a Mothership campaign.

Spell Lists Suck: Fiction-Focused Magic in D&D

I typically propose very minor alterations to D&D: how to fix summoning, how to fix shapechanging, how to fix weapon damage. I'm not really interested in redesigning the core system - just relatively simple fixes to pain points I've experienced in play. This time, I'm proposing something a little more drastic.

Spell lists suck. The way that spellcasters pick and choose the spells they learn and prepare is dumb.

Now that I've stated my thesis, I will walk it back slightly by saying spell lists are okay. Every spellcasting class has its own spell list that the player chooses from when deciding what spells their character learns or prepares each day. The unique spell lists for each spellcaster do a nice job differentiating the classes. Spellcasters either use "magic magic", "holy magic", or "nature magic", and two classes that use the same type are further differentiated by the specific spells available to them - warlocks have "creepy" spells compared to wizards, and paladins have more "battle magic" compared to clerics.

The existence of spell lists also allows for them to be subverted. Bards can, at certain levels, learn spells from any class's list. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks get access to a handful of thematic bonus spells to pad out their lists. For some reason, druids, rangers, and sorcerers don't always get these bonus spells, warlocks don't automatically learn them but instead can choose to learn them, despite every other class getting them for free, and some classes draw their thematic spells from other class's spell lists while others get free access to spells they could have had anyway...but this is a tangent.

I say spell lists suck because every class gets their spells the same way: by picking the "good" ones off a big list. There are minor differences in that clerics, druids, and paladins get all of their spells at each level at once and prepare a limited number each day, while bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks learn a limited number and always have them prepared. But the process by which clerics, druids, and paladins - or bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks - actually choose their spells is exactly the same from one class to the other.

The flavor text for the classes suggests that each is either channeling a different type of magic or else channeling the same type of magic in a different way (wizards memorize and recite arcane formula, sorcerers draw on their innate power, and warlocks use magic gifted to them by otherworldly patrons), but this isn't reflected at all in how the caster acquires the actual spells they can cast.

The cleric might acquire a couple spells which are thematic to their god, but they are otherwise preparing the same spells as any other cleric. The sorcerer doesn't unlock some new power specific to their unique origin - they just learn the next most optimal generic sorcerer spell. The warlock does not commune and negotiate with their patron for enhanced powers - they just get another warlock spell, most of which are available to all warlocks.

No class is acquiring spells in a way that's at all related to the fiction, and because everyone is just picking spells off their own little menu, the classes are distinct from one another, but multiple characters within a single class are often not.

The exception is the wizard, who we're told learns magic by reading spellbooks and scrolls, which is actually how they learn magic in the game...sometimes. Because the designers feel they can't trust the DM to include spellbooks and scrolls in their game, wizards also just arbitrarily learn spells each time they level up. Like everyone else.

If I were to redesign the spellcasting system in a drastic way, I would design fiction-focused rules for how each spellcasting class acquires their spells. What would that look like?

Wizards

It is a myth that wizards can only master "arcane" magic. All magic is arcane - even if the druids and the gods would like the world to believe otherwise.

In truth, wizards can learn any magic that is written down. The magic of the gods is written in prayer books and inscribed on altars and in reliquaries. The magic of nature is etched into ancient standing stones and trees. None of these are beyond the wizard's comprehension.

The process of learning a spell remains unchanged from the base rules - the wizard must spend a certain amount of time and money (representing the purchasing of magically primed rare inks and parchment), then succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check, the DC equaling 10 + the spell's level, in order to write the magic in their spellbook.

As in the base rules, the wizard begins their career with a spellbook containing six 1st-level spells. These spells are usually taught to them by their master, but could also be acquired and learned by chance. The DM chooses which spells they are. To encourage the wizard to adventure and discover new magic, their master should probably be dead or estranged. The adventurer wizard can always find a new master through politicking or networking.

I feel very strongly that the DM should choose the new wizard's starting spells, but I'm sure there are many who find this unconscionable. The DM and player could also negotiate what the the six spells are. Or, to simplify things, perhaps all novice wizards learn the same six spells: comprehend languages, detect magic, mage armor, magic missile, shield, and sleep. A bit dull, but classic, and not at all useless.

Other subclasses which cast wizard spells (such as the arcane trickster and eldritch knight) also have spellbooks, and learn spells in the exact same manner as the wizard. Since this is a choice which is made later in the character's career, it's best for the player to declare their intention to take this option sooner rather than later, so that the DM can plan to include a spellbook which the character can acquire. Otherwise, a character who pursues this path does not have any spells until they can acquire a suitable spellbook (another wizard in the party can help them create one, or perhaps basic primers are sold in metropolitan markets).

One of the small things that bothers me about arcane tricksters and eldritch knights is that they learn the same magic as wizards but in an entirely different way. If wizards learn from books and can learn as many spells as they can find, other classes that cast wizard spells should do the same!

Clerics

Clerics do not learn spells - they are granted spells through faith and prayer. The deity and its intermediaries provide access to the magic. This is represented by a generic cleric spell list which is then supplemented with a selection of always-ready subclass-specific spells. This is fine, but it still results in largely similar clerics with just a few unique signature spells. Why is 90% of each god's repertoire the same spell list as every other god?

In AD&D, cleric spells like bless, cure wounds, and remove curse were reversible, and the reverse versions were the purview of evil clerics only. 2e sorted cleric spells into spheres of influence and introduced specialty priests (the druid being used as an example) which had their own unique powers as well as access to specific spheres. These two elements gave distinction to good and evil clerics as well as clerics of specific deities.

Each of 5e's Divine Domains should have a unique spell list, accessible only by worshiping a god who rules over that domain. This domains akin to 2e's spheres of influence. I wouldn't only split all of the current cleric spells into these domains, but would instead go through all of the spells in the game to determine which domains (if any) each might fit into.

There would also be a general domain for the most essential cleric spells like bless. These I would divide into good and evil domains. Want to cast cure wounds? Worship a good deity. Want to cast inflict wounds? Worship an evil deity.

This is probably a great time to mention that these are broad ideas. I'm taking big hypothetical swings here. A lot of these ideas might be kind of impractical, but things that I want to toy around with on a very small scale eventually (like, if a player in my game wanted to be a Life cleric, I might create a custom Life Domain spell list for them instead of creating spell lists for every domain).

From there, clerics could remain much the same, simply choosing their domain depending on their deity, except they would have access to a specific spell list based on that choice. A single god could grant access to multiple domains at once, or a cleric may have to choose which aspect of the god they worship - i.e., the destructive firepower of the god-phoenix, or the healing power symbolized by its rebirth?

It's worth nothing that D&D is typically a polytheistic setting. I don't see why a single cleric couldn't simultaneously petition multiple deities, so long as they aren't opposed to one another. A piety system such as that in Mythic Odysseys of Theros could be used to determine what level of magic from each deity the cleric has access to, depending on their in-game actions, allowing a cleric to essentially "multiclass" with a variety of gods to gain access to a breadth of magic which rivals the wizard.

Druid

Druid spellcasting in most editions of D&D works exactly the same as for clerics, albeit with different spells. If we're making a spell list for each cleric domain, one could simply give them access to the Nature Domain spell list and call it a day, but that would be a disservice. 

My understanding of druids is not that they are just clerics for gods of nature, but instead that they are channelers of D&D's ubiquitous "background magic" associated with "nature spirits". The druid is not praying to the nature god to cast earth magic, but channeling the powers of the local earth spirits.

Because druids channel the magic of the natural spirits in their environment to cast spells, just as clerics need a unique spell list for each Divine Domain, druids need a unique spell list for each natural environment - grassland, forest, hills, desert, swamp, water, mountain, underdark, etc. Like clerics, they would also have a more general list to include things which aren't environment-specific like animal spells, healing, and the like.

Can druids cast spells in unnatural environments like settlements and dungeons? Those places still have natural elements, so I don't see why not. A mining town is still in the hills, a mummy's tomb is still in the desert, and a merfolk stronghold is still underwater, after all.

In some cases, environmental elements need to be woven into the components of the druid's individual spells. That is, casting entangle requires the presence of plant life, and call lightning requires the druid to be outdoors during a storm, which could preclude the use of those spells in certain environments.

Should druids still be required to prepare spells? If they are channeling the natural spirits of their current environment, that sounds like spontaneous casting. Spellcasters who prepare their spells do so at the beginning of the day. In the morning the druid could be in the forest, but by afternoon they might be in the swamp. Should they be able to carry forest magic into the swamp with them?

Maybe they should. There is something interesting about a high-level druid who flies quickly to the desert, communes with it, and then flies quickly to the dark wood to use the desert's withering spells against the corrupted plant monsters there. It has Pokémon vibes (complimentary). Much to think about.

Paladin and Ranger

I'll skip to these two as they are straightforward. My solution for the two of them is simple: paladin spellcasting works the same as for clerics, and ranger spellcasting works the same as for druids.

In older editions, paladins and rangers were akin to variants of the fighter with higher ability score requirements and some special thematic powers. They weren't even spellcasters until much later in their career (in 2e, 9th-level for paladins and 8th-level for rangers), and their spellcasting abilities were quite weak at that time.

I won't advocate for returning to that style of doing things. The "half-caster" spell progression of 5e works just fine (at most, I'd consider making them a "one-third-caster" like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster). 

The point is that paladins are warriors who cast cleric spells, and rangers are warriors who cast druid spells. They don't need their own spell list or unique mechanics. They will benefit from the versatility that comes from the broader cleric and druid lists.

The elephant in the room is that this requires paladins to go back to worshipping gods. I like that in 5e, paladins draw their power from the magic of the oath they swear. It's very thematic, and it implies a setting where oaths carry cosmic weight. However, I have no idea how to make it fiction-focused with regards to what spells they can cast or how their magic works.

So, paladins have to worship gods again, which is fine by me. Like clerics, their spell list is determined by their deity's domain of influence. They should still have an oath with principles they must adhere to, but the oath is sworn between them and their deity, and the deity provides the magic so long as the paladin continues to abide. The chosen deity informs which oaths are available.

Bard

In 5e, the bard learns a set number of spells and casts them spontaneously. Their spell list is mostly arcane magic, but is also a weird grab bag of divine and nature magic. Their Magical Secrets feature allows them to pilfer spells from other class's spell lists. There's some flavor text about how the bard utilizes the "Words of Creation", which are learned from "hard study" and "natural talent", but of course this isn't actually reflected in how they learn their spells.

My bard is instead inspired by the bards of editions past.

The AD&D 1e bard is famously weird. It is essentially the first "prestige class" - part fighter, part thief, and part druid.

In 2e, the bard is largely similar, except the druid spells are replaced with wizard spells. Bards in 2e keep a spellbook.

To split the difference, the fiction-focused bard uses both the wizard's and druid's rules for spellcasting simultaneously. They have a spellbook and can learn any spell that's written down, and they can also channel the magic of nature spirits and cast druid spells spontaneously. It's up to the player to choose which slots to spend on which spells.

This preserves the main element which makes bards' spellcasting unique - the hodgepodge of spells they get from different types of casters. It also fully embraces two very different interpretations of the bard of which I'm equally fond.

Sorcerer and Warlock

I'm lumping these together because the post is getting long, I don't have a lot to say about them, and the systems I have in mind for them are very similar.

In 5e, both sorcerers and warlocks learn spells as they level up and can cast them spontaneously. Some sorcerer subclasses get bonus spells that they learn automatically. Every warlock subclass gets an expanded spell list, but they don't learn the spells automatically. They have to pick them as the spells they learn when they gain levels.

Fiction-focused sorcerers have a unique spell list determined by their Sorcerous Origin, and fiction-focused warlocks have a unique spell list determined by their Otherworldly Patron. Not every sorcerer regardless of their magical origin can cast control winds. Not every warlock patron has the power to grant their petitioners finger of death. 

This makes sorcerers and warlocks the most tightly-focused casters in the game, which they should be. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone with a magical soul/anyone who makes a pact with an otherworldly entity can cast from almost exactly the same list of spells.

Conclusion

So, that is a pretty crazy system I'm proposing. The 5e PHB has eight spell lists (one for each spellcasting class). If I were to follow my own advice and make all of the specific spell lists I'm proposing - only counting classes and subclasses in the PHB - I would end up with 20 unique spell lists (seven for the cleric domains, eight for each type of natural environment, two for the sorcerer subclasses, and three for the warlock subclasses - the bard, paladin, ranger, and wizard don't need their own lists).

It is incredibly obvious why the 5e design team did not do this. The unique spell list for each class plus signature spells for things like Divine Domain, Druid Circle, Sacred Oath, and the like is an elegant solution. 

But, I just can't shake the feeling that spellcasters who use different types of magic should feel different beyond just the flavor of their spells and what kind of armor they can wear. Clerics, druids, and paladins, bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks should not be learning and using magic exactly the same way as one another.

Mostly, I want the spells that casters can access to make sense in the fiction. If the wizard is supposed to learn spells by finding them in dungeons while adventuring, they should not be stumbling upon 9th-level spells in the spellbook their master gifted them as an apprentice. Not all gods should grant access to the same magic. A druid who draws magic from the environment should not be casting the same spells in the desert as in the forest. A sorcerer or warlock with a very specific magical power source shouldn't have the same spell selection as every other sorcerer or warlock.

Well, it's easy enough for me to argue in favor of doing all this extra work without putting my money where my mouth is, so I totally understand if this sounds like a bonkers idea to anyone else. It sounds pretty bonkers to me. But in a kinda cool way.

2024 Year-in-Review

I first published this blog in October of 2023, which means 2024 was my first full year of blogging. I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the year. 

I posted 38 times this year, which is more than three times per month on average, although some months were more productive than others. 17 of those posts were play reports about my AD&D 2nd edition campaign.

Which brings me to the elephant in the room. There were a few more sessions of that campaign - maybe two or three - but ultimately, it petered out. I got tired of preparing for it, running it, and writing about it. I talked to my players about it and they were not super into it for a variety of reasons - mostly because they felt they were progressing too slowly. And they didn't want me to run a game I wasn't enjoying. So, we stopped.

It's funny because I looked back at those play reports, and in the very beginning I said that I didn't want to overdo it and make it a ton of work for myself, but that's exactly what I did. Those posts are fairly long and detailed. It was too much.

But reading them again also gave me the distinct feeling that the game was really fun. The stories that emerged were interesting, and what happened was almost never what I expected. I was really glad that I had put so much care into writing about the game, even if it contributed to my burnout, and I wished that I had kept it going. I'm considering trying to rekindle the campaign with some concessions to get the players back on board, but I'm hesitant to jump back into something that wasn't enjoyable to me and which I already successfully extricated myself from.

While that game ended, I continued playing in a separate 5e game (DMed by one of the players in my AD&D game). That DM was likewise getting tired of running the game, and I was just starting to want to try my hand at it again, so I started filling in as a guest DM here and there. 

The DM eventually ran one last adventure to conclude the game, which ended with half the surviving characters trapped on the wrong side of a portal to Hell. That scenario was interesting enough for me to want to pick up the ball and run with it, so I've been running a 5e game in Hell for a few months now.

I haven't written about that much because I don't want to spend the time when I'm energized to work on D&D stuff writing about what already happened instead of preparing for what needs to happen next. Part of me still wants to write about my ongoing games, though. Maybe I will again in 2025, if I can learn to contain myself to brief reports.

My most-viewed post from 2024 is On Initiative, in which I detail a Frankenstein's Monster initiative system for 5e which combines B/X's phased initiative with optional initiative modifiers from the 5e DMG (which are in turn inspired by AD&D's speed factor rules). This is probably popular because it was linked in Dwiz's post compiling EVERY (?) initiative method.

I'm not even really sure that I still like the system I came up with. It still requires everyone to roll initiative, so it still brings the dramatic moment when combat is joined to a grinding halt. All it really accomplishes is tie the sequence of actions to what the combatants are actually doing, and nerf spellcasters by making their spells interruptible (which is its greatest strength, in my opinion, but maybe accomplishable by other means). Admittedly, although I'm currently running a 5e game, I haven't bothered to try playtesting this because I feel like it would be a hard sell to my players.

Some other posts from this year that performed well this year include On Language (which did well mostly because it was linked over on Prismatic Wasteland and Fail Forward - thank you both!), On Reducing Combat Frequency and Length in D&D 5e, Can't Someone Else Do This?, On the Adventuring Day, On Random Encounters: Men, D&D is a Problem-Solving Game, and On Monster Manuals.

Those are most of my "big posts" from the year. A few others which didn't perform so well for whatever reason were On Identification, On Necromancy, and On Illusions. These were some of my favorite posts to write, but they are more focused topics. Maybe they are only of interest to me.

The story of 2024 is a tale of two halves: 29 posts (including all of the play reports) from January to May, and just 9 after that. Excluding the play reports, it's 12 in the first half and 9 in the second, which isn't as big of a disparity. Yet, all but two of those most-viewed posts are from the first half of the year, which suggests to me that the blog gets more eyes on it when it's more active. Ending the regular play reports maybe hurt the performance of the other posts, even if relatively few people read the play reports themselves.

I don't know what lies in store for this blog in 2025. It sometimes feels like a lot of work for very little payoff. My posts don't get a lot of comments or engagement of any kind. There is probably more I can do to promote the blog. Now I mostly do so through Twitter, while most bloggers seem to be moving to Bluesky. I don't particularly want to do that, because if I was going to quit Twitter then I would rather just quit Twitter, not move to the New Twitter and start all over again. Some people I like are still on Twitter, so in fact I would just be adding a second Twitter solely to promote this blog.

I am also somewhat hesitant to promote the blog because I guess I am suffering from some imposter syndrome. Obviously everyone who has a blog is technically a blogger, but am struggling to figure out what makes my blog unique. The only game I play is D&D. Obviously, a lot of bloggers write about D&D in all but name, but I mostly play 2e and 5e. Those are not "cool" versions of the game. (Obviously 5e is the most popular TTRPG of all time, but not among the sorts of bloggers and designers I admire.)

I still mostly like 5e (the 2014 version, anyway), despite having a lot of problems with it. I like writing about those problems and how I'd fix them. I also like looking at older editions and describing how things have changed or how 5e can be improved by implementing past design elements. Maybe that's super niche and people just aren't interested in it, but that's the sort of thing I imagined this blog would cover.

Aside from being discouraged by the lack of engagement, I'm also just not sure how much I really have to say. It's fun to write about different types of wizards, poke and plug holes in 5e, and editorialize about how everyone but me is playing the game wrong, but I don't seriously feel like my thoughts are particularly insightful or are contributing towards any broader discourse. 

I also sometimes feel like I'm just out of things to write about. I keep hoping that ideas will come with playing the game, but it doesn't happen often. Maybe if I play a new game, the ideas will come back. Maybe if I play a "cool" game, people will be interested in what I have to say.

I tried getting a few Mork Borg games together this year, but they all fizzled out an hour before we were scheduled to play. Some friends I went to PAXU with expressed interest, but we haven't been able to convert that interest into an actual session. I have plenty of adventures ready. I kind of feel that the system is too simple and is kind of...boring? But I won't know until I actually play it.

I got the Mothership boxed set and am excited to try running that. I am also considering Dungeon/Mutant Crawl Classics. I like Old School Essentials and would probably run that too, once I grab some more adventures for it. I own but am yet to read Blades in the Dark, Troika, and Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City. At the very least, it's been a good year for building my collection.

In 2025, I hope to persevere and continue posting, regardless of the subject. I hope to post more often but with shorter entries, so that it doesn't feel like a chore. I hope to break out of my comfort zone and play new games. I hope to play with new people, too. I hope to write about those experiences. I hope to gain some confidence and make more of an effort to get this blog out there. Mostly I just hope to be inspired.

On Settlements

It's been on my to-do list for some time to develop some method for fleshing out settlements in my D&D games:

I had become aware at this point that my settlements need some work. They are usually something of an afterthought for me - a place for the party to sleep, gather rumors, recruit NPCs, shop, acquire services, and the like. Aside from the local ruler and nearby quest hooks, they don't have much character. I've decided to try to devote more time to fleshing them out with more details. 

I don't particularly care what the local inns are called or what the blacksmith's name is, but it would be nice to know a factoid or two about local history, landmarks, important NPCs, and potential quests to be had in the settlement itself. I'm not entirely sure how I intend to flesh all that out and make it gameable (how many adventure sights should be in a village? a town? a city?), but it's something I'm definitely thinking about.

I don't know that I'm necessarily any closer to figuring it out definitively, but I figured I'd just start writing about it and see where the blogging process takes me.

It's worth nothing that there is a fantastic post on urban gameplay over at A Knight at the Opera which not only has an excellent and comprehensive bibliography but also a summary of the prevailing attitudes and approaches towards urban gameplay in the hobby. Dwiz's thoughts about urban gameplay, why it's daunting to prepare for and run, why it's important to include in a fantasy roleplaying game, and critiques of common approaches are similar to my opinions on the subject. 

I will try to make this post unique and complimentary, rather than regurgitating the very good and thorough work Dwiz has already done.

The Purpose of the Settlement

What is the gameplay purpose of a settlement in D&D? The above quote from one of my previous play report addresses how I was thinking about the settlement at the time: a place for the party to recover and resupply (by resting and regaining hit points, but also purchasing equipment or recruiting NPC hirelings and henchmen), obtain services (like getting an NPC to cast identify on the magic item they found, or having their recently-acquired ankheg shells made into armor), and gather rumors (which provide gameable information about the region and broader setting, particularly calls to adventure).

That's a good amount of things, but the settlement serves so many other purposes. The most obvious purposes are tied directly to adventuring, which is the core element of the game - obtaining and completing quests (the former is often a result of gathering rumors, but can also result from being proactively recruited by NPCs, in which case a return to the settlement may be needed to cash in on the reward, if any) and offloading acquired loot. 

And the settlement not only points the players towards adventure elsewhere, but can itself be an adventure location. That adventure might involve ridding an abandoned house in the village of a restless spirit, dealing with doppelgängers who have replaced the town's most esteemed family, bumbling through a secret door in an alley and into a lich's tomb, or confronting the cabal of vampires which pulls the city-state's strings of power.

Settlements are also a place where players can engage in a different timescale of play - downtime activities. They might spend weeks carousing and gambling, gathering information about their next adventure at the local archives, devising new spells and magic items, brewing potions, planning heists, and bribing or romancing NPCs. 

Xanathar's Guide to Everything has rules for downtime in 5e which are more robust than those initially presented in the DMG, offering a range of complications that might occur for each activity the players pursue. These in turn can spur further adventures involving new allies and adversaries. (Unfortunately, because of the speed of natural healing in 5e - i.e., instant - player characters rarely if ever need to spend extended periods of time in a settlement between adventures, instead doing so only if the downtime activity itself is some sort of means to an end.)

As the players make contacts of the settlement's NPCs and become entangled in its politics and schemes, they may eventually want to plant roots there themselves. They may want to build their own estates, gambling dens, libraries, alchemical labs, temples, guildhalls, taverns, inns, and whatnot. The settlement has always been intended to be the first* "home base" for player characters - filled with recurring NPCs, intrigue, and property and businesses for them to own. 

(*In OD&D, the intention was for player characters to eventually establish a more permanent home base by claiming unsettled wilderness and building their strongholds, temples, and the like there, but I don't see much reason why they couldn't do the same in a settlement - albeit with more hoops to jump through.)

If the settlement is only a place to recover and resupply between adventures, it makes plenty of sense to spend very little time thinking about it or playing in it. But, as I've hopefully demonstrated, the settlement can and probably should be a lot more - which means a lot more time and consideration needs to be put into it.

Where are the Settlements?

The first problem I'm confronted with when preparing settlements for a D&D game is where exactly to put them. 

I almost exclusively run my campaigns as sandboxes in a large region represented by a hex map. It's not a "hexcrawl" per se, because I present the players with a map of the region with known locations included - the lay of the land is known from the outset, as are the locations of adventure sites, and I'm transparent with the players about the fastest way to travel from A to B. Wilderness exploration is not focused on gradually uncovering the "fog of war" so to speak, but on traveling from one known location to another, with the occasional unexpected encounter or discovery along the way. The characters are assumed to be somewhat familiar with the area, because at least one of them is usually from there, which means they should know approximately where the population centers are.

I start my campaign prep by using a modified version of Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design to create a map of the region. I like to be surprised by what the area of play looks like, so this randomized method works for me. I try to use common sense to keep it from looking too bizarre. Once I have the map, I have to decide how to place the settlements (among other things).

I could just place the settlements where it makes sense for them to be - cities are mostly on the coast and adjacent to rivers, with some being inland to serve as trade nexuses or capitals for other forms of industry. They're surrounded by a ring of villages and towns which support the city. The towns are in turn surrounded by villages which support them, and the villages are surrounded by hamlets and thorps which support them. There's plenty of information online about why cities are where they are. I've played a lot of Civilization - I've got a pretty good idea as to where is the best hex to plant a city.

But something about that is just kind of...boring to me. I'll never end up with a city like Tenochtitlan, built on a marshy island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, with great causeways connecting the sprawling city center to the lake shores. Tenochtitlan wasn't there because it was an good place to build a city, but quite the opposite - the Mexica were more or less exiled there for being bad neighbors who angered the local powers. Tenochtitlan only developed into the urban center that it was as the Mexica rose to power in the region by conquering the surrounding people, who had much better land.

Likewise, if I simply place settlements where it makes sense for them to be, I'll never end up with a city in the middle of an arcane wasteland, its hinterland sucked of all vegetal life by the hubris of its sorcerous rulers and their defiling magic. I'll never end up with the seat of a lizardfolk empire in a vast and intractable swamp. I could decide to deliberately include those things, but if there's one thing I hate doing when preparing a campaign setting, it's deciding things.

As a DM, I'm deciding things all the time. I got back into running D&D around 2018. I've been deciding things continuously for like six years. It's exhausting.

The opposite of deciding things is rolling dice and letting them decide for me (or at least letting them do their damnedest to convince me).

One method of letting the dice decide is presented in the AD&D DMG, where the DM rolls on each hex to determine inhabitation (including castles and ruins). This allows for an 11% chance of a settlement being present in each hex, with a 1% chance for a city to be present. That doesn't sound like a lot, but my regional maps are usually 37x37, which is 1,369 hexes, meaning approximately 150 settlements and 13 cities. That is far more than I care to detail, especially considering that I'm trying to give these locations their due.

Instead, I again prefer a modified version of Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design. Part 2 of the process details placing major and minor locations on the map generated in Part 1. There can only be one major location in each "atlas hex" (a 5x5 hex superimposed on top of the smaller hexes), whether there is major location at all is determined by dicing against the hex's terrain, and the location has only a 1-in-6 chance of being a settlement.

This method usually leaves me with around two cities and one city-state/metropolis per area of play, which is a very manageable number while still allowing for some variety of places to explore and engage in urban adventure.

The random placement of settlements doesn't necessarily make sense, but that's a feature, not a bug. D&D is a fantastic game - settlements might exist in odd places because of the magical nature of the world and its inhabitants. Dwarves, elves, halflings, goblinoids, kobolds, orcs, and the like live in different places than humans. Cities can sustain themselves in unusual places thanks to magic, and they might be built in those places because their location allows the inhabitants to take advantage of some magical resource, like ancient technology or ley lines.

There could be some version of this procedure where, after making the regional map, I stock it with "resources" like food, livestock, stone, and luxury and trade goods, then place the cities in resource-rich locations a la Civilization, but I don't think it's worth it to do all that work when I could just roll on a table to determine if a settlement is known for its thoroughbred horses, its marble quarries, or its gold mines (even that much, I think, is pretty much unnecessary for gameplay purposes).

Types of Settlements

Another benefit of Welsh Piper's method is that it breaks settlements down into three types: towns, cities, and city-states - I add villages (or more accurately, probably, small towns) to the list so that I have four "tiers" of settlements corresponding to 5e's tiers of play (my modified method treats a "major" settlement as being a city or city-state, and a "minor" settlement as being a village or town). I think this is a lot neater than Gygax's nitty-gritty distinction between single dwellings, thorps, hamlets, and villages. I also like having the distinction between small cities and sprawling, anachronistic, fantastical cosmopolitan metropolises.

Using a combination of the 1e DMG and the 5e DMG, I have the following table for a settlement's population:

Village: 2d3+4 x 100 (600 to 1,000)

Town: 2d3 x 1000 (2,000 to 6,000)

City: 6d4+1 x 1000 (7,000 to 25,000)

City-State: 1d4+2 x 10,000 (30,000 to 60,000)

These numbers are simply to find some sort of sweet spot between what Gygax originally wrote in the AD&D DMG and how the designers of modern D&D see the game today. I have no idea (or care to determine) whether the numbers are "realistic" or "make sense". 

One could certainly build their setting using historical medieval demographics, but this seems like a tedious slog to me, involving calculating hectares of arable land and dividing numbers and squaring them and whatnot. Besides, D&D is not medieval and never was. I'm just trying to play a fun fantasy game, not recreate the idea of France but with goblins. Just as dungeons are the mythic underworld and the wilderness is the mythic wilderness, cities should be mythic too.

Anyway, now I know a settlement's approximate population. What is the point of determining that? 

Fantastic Demographics

My general rule is this: 1-in-100 people have class levels. Of that 1-in-100, 65% are Tier 1 (levels 1-4), 20% are Tier 2 (levels 5-10), 10% are Tier 3 (levels 11-16), and 5% are Tier 4 (level 17+). This works for 5e, where tiers of play are made explicit, but I use a different breakdown when playing something like AD&D.

This ensures that not only are player characters "special", but also that they aren't the most special. It's not just dressing for the setting, or an attempt at simulation - it has gameplay implications. This number of leveled NPCs in the setting allows for there to be replacement player characters, allied and rival adventuring parties, knowledgeable wizards to serve as mentors, devout clerics to raise the party's dead before they have ready access to such magic, immortal archdruids and their weirdly specific hierarchies and ranked battles for advancement, and master thieves sending the party's rogue out on heists.

Using this rule, villages will on average have 7 NPCs with class levels, with at least one of Tier 2 and a chance of one or two of Tier 3 or 4 in rare and very rare cases. The average town will have 26 such NPCs, with at least one of Tier 4. The average city will have 160 leveled NPCs with at least 8 of Tier 4. The average city-state will have 450 leveled NPCs with a whopping 22 to 23 or so of Tier 4.

Okay...so what use is any of that? I could exhaustively detail all of these NPCs, but it should be apparent that at the city, city-state, and even town levels this is not really practical. Instead, I tend to focus on the exceptional leveled NPCs in each settlement. 

Villages are assumed to have a handful of Tier 1 NPCs, so I only detail those of higher level than that (on average, 2 NPCs). Towns are assumed to have Tier 1 and 2 NPCs, so I only detail those or Tier 3 and 4 (on average, 4 NPCs), and so on. I wouldn't detail all 8 to 23 Tier 4 NPCs in a city or city-state, but assuming an even distribution of those NPCs from levels 17 to 20, I know that there are 2 to 6 NPCs of level 20 in such a settlement. Those might be leaders of regional factions, and similar NPCs found in the smaller settlements in the region might then be their agents, lieutenants, and the like.

The exceptional NPCs in each settlement might be the rulers of the place (because D&D implied setting is a levelocracy), or else provide local color. A village which is home to a Tier 2 fighter, wizard, cleric, or rogue would probably feature a prominent stronghold, mage's tower, temple, or criminal operation which is either a landmark that stands out to the player characters upon their arrival there, or otherwise influences events and drives adventure in the settlement.

By comparison, a city-state might have whole neighborhoods dedicated to the needs of its powerful NPCs. There could be a district which houses the wizarding academy, with streets lined by spell component shops, crowded with familiars, constructs, and summoned extraplanar creatures who do their masters' bidding, all in the shadow of soaring wizards' towers. Another district might house the many temples run by powerful clerics. Another might be a seedy slum run by local thieves' guild bosses who are eternally at war. An entertainment district might house the bard college, amphitheaters, and coliseum. A lush garden might be the "stronghold" of the urban arch-druid. I find it far more gameable to flavor the settlement this way than to determine a handful of mundane industries like masonry or textiles, which the players rarely ever do anything with.

This information also suggests what sorts of problems the locals are able to deal with on their own, as well as when they would need outside help. The village might have problems with the minor fey of the fields and woods, or with griffons stalking their horses, or skeletons stirring in the barrow-mound over the hill, but there are leveled NPCs in the village who can deal with that. That's not to say that the villagers won't turn to the player characters for help, but that the player characters might then be able to encounter allies or rival adventurers while dealing with those problems.

The 10th-level wizard might be able to handle the pig-stealing kobolds with a flick of the wrist, but that wizard is preoccupied with larger concerns, like the young dragon that's started nesting in the nearby swamp. The wizard can't handle that issue on their own, so they would need to send for help from a nearby town or city.

Similarly, while individuals within a city-state might still be preyed upon by puddings from the sewers, they don't pose any threat of overrunning the place. A portal to Orcus's realm in the Abyss, spewing undead demons into the undercity, is another matter entirely.

Magical Goods and Services

The type of settlement and its NPCs also tell me what sorts of services are available in the settlement: 1st- and 2nd-level spells in a village, 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-level spells in a town, 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-level spells in a city, and 9th-level spells in a city-state. The occasional exceptional NPC in a settlement can provide additional services, which is why it's important to determine who exactly those NPCs are (a Tier 2 fighter in the village provides different services than a Tier 2 wizard, cleric, or rogue) - and what the players might have to do to befriend them.

This approach is somewhat validated by the 2024 PHB, which lists what spellcasting services are available in which type of settlement:

Spellcasting Services
Spell Level Availability
Cantrip         Village, town, or city
1                 Village, town, or city
2                 Village, town, or city
3                 Town or city only
4–5                 Town or city only
6–8                 City only
9                 City only

This aligns eerily closely with my own system, aside from the fact that I distinguish between cities and city-states.

I extrapolate this further with regards to the buying and selling of magic items (which I allow not because it's my preference, but because my players feel very strongly about being able to do it). Since 5e again helpfully breaks magic items down into "tiers" based on rarity, I allow common magic items to be bought and sold in villages, uncommon items in towns, rare items in cities, and very rare items in city-states. Legendary items and artifacts are of course the things that adventures are made of.

Exceptional NPCs might have additional magic items to sell, but these will probably be limited to the extent that the player characters will have to befriend that specific NPC, and by the fact that the NPC will likely only sell items which they cannot use themselves or which they can reproduce (potions, scrolls, etc.).

The types of items the player characters can buy in the settlement (and the type of settlement) also determine some of the settlement's locations and NPCs. In a village, potions might be sold by an otherwise mundane herbalist or disgraced alchemist. Scrolls might be sold by a hedge wizard. A village might have a blacksmith, but the player characters will need to travel to town to find the blacksmith who forges +1 swords or whatever, whereas a city-state might have an entire district where master smiths churn out such weapons every week.

Lodging

According to this post on Red Ragged Fiend (which also has an interesting and insightful series on worldbuilding which could potentially compete with the Welsh Piper method in terms of stocking a sandbox, but which I personally don't prefer due to how involved it is), "historical data" suggests that "there’s an average of one inn in a settlement for every 2,000 residents." I can't speak to the veracity of that assertion, but it sounds good enough, so let's roll with it.

In keeping with our established population guidelines for each type of settlement, that means that villages never have an inn, the average town has one, the average city has 8, and the average city-state has 22.

The PHB outlines seven types of lifestyle: wretched, squalid, poor, modest, comfortable, wealthy, and aristocratic. The wretched lifestyle costs nothing and suggests that the player character isn't receiving any hospitality at all - they're basically living on the street, which leaves six types of lodging (examples from the PHB text):

• Squalid: A vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town
• Poor: A room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern
• Modest: A room in a boarding house, inn, or temple in an older part of town
• Comfortable: A private room at a fine inn
• Wealthy: A comfortable suite at a fine inn
• Aristocratic: Rooms in the finest inn

This in turn suggests the following types of inn:

• Vermin-infested boarding houses
• Flophouses and taverns
• Boarding houses, inns, and temples
• Fine inns
• The FINEST inns

Since the average town has one inn, and modest is right in the middle of the seven types of lifestyles, I assume the one inn in the average town is a boarding house or inn (whether or not there's a temple would be determined by whether the town has leveled clerics or maybe paladins among its population).

A city with 8 inns would probably have a relatively even spread of the five types (perhaps one of each plus an additional one of each of the three middle types), and the same could be said of a city-state with 22 inns (roughly four of each type plus two more). This suggests areas of the city segregated by class - the slums or lower city, the middle ward, and the upper city.

Staying in the poorer inns should come with drawbacks, while the richer inns come with benefits. Characters who stay at the poorer inns are susceptible to crime and disease, while those who stay at the richer inns have access to the middle and upper classes - merchants, artisans, nobility, politicians, and high priests. On the other hand, perhaps a character can keep a low profile in a poorer inn, while a character in a richer inn is vulnerable to political machinations and enemies looking to use them for their wealth.

This has implications for the carousing downtime activity. Xanathar's Guide to Everything says that characters can carouse with the upper class only if they have the noble background, have made sufficient contacts, or disguise themselves and use the Deception skill to pass themselves off as foreign nobles. I would say that the character's lifestyle puts a hard limit on who will associate with them, which is a decent way to incentivize players to spend that 10 gp per night on accommodations at the FINEST inns.

The carousing downtime activity also implies the existence of additional locations in the settlement, which is where the carousing actually occurs. It might be in the common rooms of the FINEST inns, but it could just as well occur at a noble's manor (every D&D game needs an Eyes Wide Shut party), a guildhall, or the like.

I wouldn't detail every inn in every settlement in advance, but I would consider where the player characters might find lodging in a village, or detail the one inn in town, or an inn of each type in a city or city-state. I could come up with those details on the fly, but if I always improvise, I'll probably never come up with anything like the Yawning Portal, the Elfsong Tavern, the Overlook Hotel, or any truly fantastic inns - which is what a good D&D game deserves.

Other Downtime Activities

Carousing is not the only downtime activity which implies the existence of a location in the settlement. 

If player characters can buy magic items, then there must be a place to do so - an auction house, a magical Walmart, or specialty shops whose artisans imbue their wares with magical power. 

Crafting mundane and magical items requires access to facilities with equipment - alchemical laboratories, tanneries, forges, and such. 

The crime downtime activity allows the player to target a struggling merchant, a prosperous merchant, a noble, or "one of the richest figures in town", all of whom would presumably have shops, warehouses, homes, vaults, and the like.

Gambling can be done in taverns, but it also implies the existence of dens, gaming halls, and maybe even magi-tech casinos.

Pit fighting might be fighting farm boys in the village, back alley brawling, basement fight clubs, or a Roman coliseum with thousands of spectators.

Relaxation requires only modest living expenses and could be done at a boarding house, inn, or temple, or at a specialty spa, sauna, or bathhouse.

Religious service is done at a religious building dedicated to a deity "whose beliefs and ethos align with the character's", although I don't see why a character can't perform religious services disingenuously in order to ingratiate themselves to the clergy, provided the character has the requisite skills. In a smaller settlement without much choice of such places, this may be the only option.

Research is done at libraries or with the help of a sage. This could be an exiled scholar or hedge wizard in a village or a full-blown university or national college in a city.

Training might take place at a guildhall, with a tutor, or with an appropriately leveled NPC.

Finally, work can occur in many places, depending on the character's skills - whether backbreaking labor in, at, or on the fields, lumber mills, mines, docks, plantations, quarries, or fishing boats, an apprenticeship at a guild or artisan's workshop, or a musician's residency at a tavern or music hall.

It's way too much work to detail all these locations, especially for multiple settlements. It's appropriate to simply keep in mind that these places exist (although probably not everywhere), and determine the specifics once the player characters express an interest in engaging with them.

Player Character Backgrounds

There are a number of player backgrounds that also imply the existence of certain locations and NPCs in a settlement.

Acolytes can receive free healing and lodging at religious sites of the character's deity, as well as support from people of the same faith.

Criminals have access to criminal contacts, including messengers, corrupt officials, and "seedy sailors".

Entertainers can receive free food and lodging in exchange for performing at an inn, tavern, circus, theater, or noble's court, and people in town tend to recognize them. Gladiators gain access to arenas and secret fight clubs.

Folk heroes can receive shelter from commoners.

Guild artisans are members of a guild, with access to a guildhall, which in turn provides access to patrons, allies, hirelings, and politicians, and protection from the law.

Nobles are welcomed by figures in high society. 

Sages have access to libraries and information.

Urchins know hidden ways through the city, allowing them to traverse it twice as fast (suggesting that time should be a factor when traveling from one place to another in such environments).

As with downtime activities, not every settlement needs all of these things. There won't always be a temple or local worshipers of the character's deity, and smaller settlements won't always have spies from the criminal's network, or a guildhall, and they will be too small to necessitate the use of the urchin's City Secrets feature. Still, all are worth considering, especially when preparing larger settlements.

Adventure Sites

As I mentioned earlier, a settlement can point the players towards adventure or be the site of adventure itself - and in this case, I'm not talking about carousing, or committing crimes, pit fighting, or any of those things. I'm talking about the rat-infested cellars, the ruins at the bottom of the town's lake, the estate of the richest merchant in the city who is a rakshasa in disguise, and the lair of the Great Old One cult infiltrating the city-state's halls of power.

I know how to stock a dungeon with monsters, traps, tricks, and treasure. I know how to stock a wilderness with strongholds, ruins, and monster lairs. How do I "stock" a settlement - not just with powerful NPCs, inns, libraries, guildhalls, shops, and the like, but with dungeons, and monsters? Places to explore and threats to overcome? I truly don't know of any methods for doing so.

And these aren't things I can make up on the fly. I can't just decide one week that the city-state that the players have been cruising around for several months is suddenly ruled by a vampire lord that needs to be taken down - that needs to be apparent if the player characters spend any significant time in the place at all (and maybe even evident upon their initial arrival). The same goes for a hag disguising itself as the village herbalist, wererats crawling out of the ruins beneath town at night, or a silver dragon leading a crusade against the city's criminal element.

A lot of settlement generators will have a table to roll on to determine "what's going on" or what "the current problem" is, which is a place to start, but I find it unsatisfying that there should only be one big thing happening in a sprawling metropolis. I like the idea of there being one adventure site in any given village - a haunted house or abandoned mill or infested barn, for example - but what about in town or city?

Maybe there's an adventure site per every 1,000 residents (rounded up). That's one in the average village and three in the average town, but 16 in the average city and 45 in the average city-state. That seems like way too much, considering that I'd want these elements to actually impact life in the settlement and so would have to have some idea as to what each entailed.

Maybe there's one adventure site in a village, two in a town, three in a city, and four in a city-state. But that feels too small.

Maybe I should treat adventure sites similarly to powerful NPCs - there might be hundreds of them in a sprawling metropolis, but I only need to detail the exceptional ones - but then that eliminates the possibility of low-level adventures in a big city, because I'm only detailing those of Tier 4 or so. 

Maybe I only detail those which the players are likely to engage with - i.e., start with the small-time stuff, then build up as the campaign goes on - but if I don't know what the settlement's most dangerous adversaries are until the players are ready to engage with them, then I can't reason out ahead of time how those more powerful creatures influence the settlement and the larger world.

Districts

This is probably the time to mention that Brave (Dwiz's Knave hack) has a pretty neat system for building settlements. According to that procedure, each settlement has a certain number of districts, industries, defenses, languages, and temples. Then, each district has its own shops, landmarks, factions, NPCs, and taverns. 

Detailing each district according to this system ends up being a little much for my purposes. A city has 5 to 6 districts, each with 2 to 3 factions, for 10 to 18 factions in a single city on average. Remember, I'm building about 3 cities for a single campaign, and not really trying to determine ahead of time what or who every shop, tavern, and NPC is. 

While Brave's system is more in-depth than I need, I do really like the idea of breaking the city down into districts. A village is basically a single district. A town will have 2 or 3 districts on average. An average city will have 5 or 6 districts. There's nothing equivalent to my city-states in the Brave settlement rules (Dwiz is clear in his post on urban gameplay that he prefers much smaller, more historically accurate medieval settlements in his games), so I had to extrapolate to determine how many districts there should be. I landed on 3d6+1, which is an average of 10 or 11. 

Instead of rolling up a list of factions, landmarks, and NPCs in each district, I use districts to break a settlement down into tightly-themed chunks: the port, the slums, the rich people neighborhood, the market, the temple district, the place where all the wizards live, etc. 

With themed districts, it's easy to determine where the characters need to go for whatever activity they'd like to do. If they want to talk to the mayor, they have to go to his manor on the hill in the town's center. If they want to shop, they need to go to the market district. If they need to raise an ally from the dead, they need to go to where the temples are. Once I know what a district's theme is, I can figure out who the important factions and NPCs are based on that.

If there are more than three districts, I'll make a hex map with each district represented by a hex to see how they connect (if there are three or fewer districts, I assume they're all connected to each other, so there's no need to map it out). That way, I know what districts the characters need to move through as they run their errands.

Moving through a district is a turn. Doing anything within a district is also a turn. I don't really care how long a turn is or where each building or landmark is in the district relative to the others. If it's important to track exactly how long the party spends in the settlement, I might call a turn 10 minutes. D&D characters are weirdos who do everything together apparently, so I imagine most parties will stick together when running their errands, though it may behoove them to split up if they have a lot to do and are crunched for time somehow.

I'm aspiring to have a random encounter table for each district, which I would roll on every turn, but maybe the AD&D 1e city encounters table is just fine. Creating urban encounter tables is a conversation for another day.

To circle back to my point about adventure sites, I can also give each district a unique problem related to its theme. That problem might then suggest one or more adventure sites in that district. There might be a necromancer raising zombies in the cemeteries of the temple district, giant crocodiles in the sewers beneath the slums, and a colony of mind flayers infiltrating the upper city. Just as the district's theme informs what services, factions, and NPCs are there, it also informs what problems the district experiences, which in turn inform its adventure sites.

A City in Hell

I've been running a 5e game for the past few months. I was originally a player in the game and occasionally ran a short adventure, but when the primary DM ran their last adventure, which ended with the remaining party members being trapped on the wrong side of a portal to Hell, I couldn't resist picking up the reins.

The party is now on their way to visit the region's metropolis, which I decided was once a mortal city that was sold to Hell by its rulers - Descent Into Avernus-type thing, but better because I'm doing it instead of Wizards of the Coast.

I've been using my methods to flesh it out. It has a population of 39,000 mortals, which means about 4 or 5 20th-level NPCs. There are 15 districts and 19 inns of varying quality. Each district has its own theme and a single problem of varying severity. I arranged them all on a hex map so I can see how they all connect. I don't have every single little detail figured out, but I know where the players can find goods and services, high-level NPCs, lodging, and locations related to their backgrounds or to downtime activities. I know where the districts that contain those things are in relation to the rest of the city and how the character need to navigate the city to get to those places.

It's still a work in progress. I'm trying to figure out how many NPCs need to be fleshed out, whether every problem needs a "monster" (whether it be a literal monster or an NPC) at its root, and why the party might travel to each district aside from just passing through. I really want to make an encounter table for each district, but on top of everything else I need to get together, that seems like a tall order.

I can easily see how someone can get totally bogged down when detailing a city, and how a sprawling, anachronistic metropolis could be the setting for an entire campaign.

Conclusion

After all that, I don't know that I'm that much closer to having a foolproof method for generating settlements, but I at least have a pretty good idea of what they're for, and what they need to have in order to serve their multifaceted purposes. I have a method of placing settlements and determining their populations, what powerful NPCs reside in them, what services they can provide, how many neighborhoods they have, and what problems those neighborhoods are facing.

A lot of this is purely dependent on the players and their characters. Their chosen races, backgrounds, and classes will all determine what elements of a settlement need to be fleshed out, as will their in-game desires. Like most prep in a D&D game (especially a sandbox), I don't want to have to figure out every little detail ahead of time - I just need to try to stay one, two, or three steps ahead of the players, and have some idea of what exists in the world on the margins of the game in case the players decide to ask about it or go looking for something.

This is certainly nothing like a definitive guide to settlements in D&D. I'm yet to find anything that is, but I'm always fascinated to read others' opinions on the topic, and I always come away with something new to think about for my own games. Hopefully this post has given someone something new to think about or a new way to approach this kind of gameplay.