Settlement Crafting
Worldbuilding is fun. Whether you build from the inside out (like me) or the outside in, it’s just plain fun.
Sometimes, though, you can get stuck. When your players are wandering from hex to hex, exploring what’s over the next hill, the table might come up “village/town”. If you don’t have such a place prepared, what do you do?
Your best option is to have backed our crowdfunding campaign and gotten a copy of our book Legendary Locations. Click the picture to go follow the project on Kickstarter!
Since Legendary Locations isn’t out yet, you’ll have to do some of the heavy lifting yourself. Luckily, there are tools for that!
- Quick & Dirty – this one is super fast, super easy, and very well suited for the world-builder who likes inside-out development. This tool figures out where the characters are and lets you expand from there.
- Use your dice to make your city map, not by rolling on tables, but by actually rolling on the table. It’ll make more sense once you’ve read the link. I have yet to use this tool for anything more than playing around, because I generally start from an existing map, but I really want to give it a go!
- Next is a pretty thorough generator that operates on 2d6. Actually, it’s more of an idea generator than actual generator, as it gives you prompts rather than strictly defining the place’s characteristics. That said, it gives you a TON of prompts; your imagination is sure to latch on to something juicy.
- I’m a huge fan of Infinigrad. It’s a PDF with tons of generation tables, and it also comes with HTML files that automate the rolls from the book. Super quick and easy, and it generates some very quirky combinations sure to spark your creative interest.
- Finally, if you’re like me you start with a map and imagine what/who lives there and why. If that’s true, I bet you know about Watabou’s map generators on Itch. But if you don’t, check out the City Generator and – if you want a bit more granularity – the Neighborhood Generator.
My next project might just be using all these generators to flesh out a city for an urban sandbox. I’m about to start a fresh Spears & Spells campaign for some friends; it feels interesting to generate everything rather than do a lot of prep work.
What do you think? Drop a comment!
