I was playing Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) with my sons last week. They didn’t like how constrained the gameplay felt playing the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle starter set and being stuck on that tiny island, so I had them board a ship that took them to Neverwinter.
I’d been reading a lot about Neverwinter, in the Forgotten Realms setting of DnD. It’s a neat fantasy city with lots of epic history. However, having characters hang out in a bar or go shopping is a bit dull for kids ages 13 and 10. To keep my kids engaged, I need things to happen when they visit a city.
What I ended up doing was arranging the players to encounter this spoiled young Waterdhavian noble who happens to have too much money and takes pleasure in taking advantage of commoners. He and his cronies hired the players’ characters to go “adventuring” with them for a bag of gold. They ended up finding an ogre at the outskirts of the city and defeating it (the noble and his friends didn’t help at all, but decided to take credit for killing the ogre after poking it with a sword as it fell dead). The players found a magical sword near the ogre and took it. When they all returned to town, the noble paid the players a sack of gold, albeit a tiny sack of 20 gold pieces, not the big sack of gold that the players imagined. The next day, after the players rested in the inn went out exploring the city, the noble shows up with his cronies and a dozen Mintarn mercenary guards (who they bribed), points to the players and shouts, “There he is, that’s the guy who stole my sword!” As the mercenaries run towards the players, a wizard magic shop owner who the players met the other day telepathically tells the players to escape into his shop and downstairs into his cellar. He telepathically tells them there’s a back door where they can escape down there. The players run into his shop, go downstairs, and find a door that ends up being a portal to the Infinite Staircase, and the portal closes soon after all the players went through it… and that’s how I got my players to the Infinite Staircase so they can play the adventures in Quests from the Infinite Staircase.
What I’d like to do is come up with more of these encounters for players visiting fantasy cities while playing DnD. Cities should be another place for stories and adventure, not just boring places for drinking imaginary ale and shopping for imaginary items.
One of my inspirations for this idea of urban encounters is the 1989 DnD computer game Hillsfar. That entire game centered around exploring the town of Hillsfar. In the game, you could fight monsters in the arena, break into buildings to find treasure, visit the archery range, and other things. The idea was that you would explore the city and all it has to offer, and hopefully have fun doing it.
Leave a Reply