Creating A Campagin Part 3: Shopping!

 Intro

Well, hello there, my lovelies,

Welcome back to the third part of my series, where I discuss how I go about building a new campaign setting. I am essentially arguing that the most important thing when planning your campaign is creating a sense of immersion.  That every time your players come to the table, they feel like your world is alive, and they are excited to be part of it. If they have the buy-in for your game, it will make everything 100 times smoother.

If you want to read the previous posts, you can find them here.

Part 1: Creating Ideas

Part 2: Character Creation

In this post, I will describe two ways of injecting that flavour into your game world via shops and other vendors.

1. Specialist vendors: who sell products unique to that location.

2. Item flavour text: A sentence or two that adds context to a product, and helps players expand their mental model of the game world.

Specialist Vendors

Firstly, let's take a look at specialist vendors, and for that, we need to consider the magnificent Bakewell Tart.

Banging

The Bakewell tart is a classic British treat. This shortcrust dessert stuffed with jam and icing is topped with a glazed cherry, making it an absolute banger. And if you have had the privilege of eating one before, you will no doubt agree with me.

Bakewell tarts were invented in the town of Bakewell, in the Peak District of the North of England. The town is something of a tourist spot nowadays, and it is chock full of bakeries selling Bakewell Tarts, because this is its local speciality, the town’s cultural gift to the world.

They sell giant Bakewells here. I had one to myself, and I regret nothing.

So, when you are making vendors think about what makes that town special, and create a niche vendor to reflect that. Human culture is often expressed in fashion, food, the arts, and technology, so specialist vendors selling something of that sort would work well. If you are stuck, here are some potential specialist vendors.

1. Food and drink

2. Tobbaconist

3. Musical instruments

4. Toy shops

5. Florist

6. Spas and beauty salons

7. Bars, restaurants, and taverns

8. Book sellers

9. Art galleries

10. Curio shops

11. Tailor’s

12. Engineering/tinkers

Pro-Tip:

Always give your shops 10, 12, or 20 items. That way, you can use them as an ad hoc loot table!

Flavour Text

Again, we can return to the Souls games for inspiration here. A short piece of flavour text can add depth to your world with very little effort. It will make the player think about how that item fits into your world, and they map it into their mental model, which in turn makes your world feel more alive.

This is how I would add flavour text to the Bakewell Tart.

Bakewell Tart

Created in the Black Horse Inn in the 1820s. This delicious dessert from the town of Bakewell is guaranteed to give you the energy to hike across the beautiful landscape of the Peak District. 

Counts as 1 ration.

Examples

Pro-Tip

Not every item needs a purpose. Some can be in the shop as filler, or to add flavour. It is just a reflection of what the vendor would usually sell.

I consistently find that one of the best ways to add flavour to the game is to create an alcohol vendor. So many nations on earth have their own unique drink that reflects local culture. The example below is from my Webrail campaign, and each entry comes with a bit of flavour text.

Drinks Merchant
Item	Cost
Memories of Yggdrisil An earthy Cabernet Sauvignon.  Drinkers often report having dreams of a vast tree once consumed.	10
Crystal Icewine Technically cursed.  This rare wine is made from enchanted ice crystals found on frozen fragments. It's known for its crisp, sweet flavour and its ability to briefly lower the drinker’s body temperature.	25
Railside Red A popular and relatively cheap house red.  Notable for its sweet and fruity flavour.	5
Ghosttouched Chardonnay A delicate chardonnay.  The wine is almost exclusively made from grapes that have grown in necromantically infused landscapes.  When drinking it, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.	20
Holy Fuck Vodka Vodka with an extra kick.  Upon taking a shot, the drinker must make a Constitution check.  If they fail, they must say “holy fuck”.	30
Mother’s Ruin Gin A brand of gin that gleefully leans into its infamous reputation.  The label proudly states. “The favourite drink of wayward women”	22
Abyss Spiced Rum Abyss spiced rum is aged in a unique fashion.  Kegs are lowered off the sides of fragments for years at a time.  The process gives the rum an extra kick that is found in no other drink.	50
Driver’s Tipple Whiskey A warm and peaty whiskey.  One swig of this is enough to shock the senses to make you alert.  One bottle is enough to lull you into a dreamless sleep.	50
Axel Grease Moonshine Yes, it is actually made from fermented axle grease.	5

The next example is a vendor who sold meat and tusks. This was from a settlement found in cold regions, and was inhabited by Viking-like folk.

Food and Tusks
Item	Description	Cost
Whale meat	Filing and Fatty. 1 ration.	1cp
Walrus Meat	Tastes like pork. 1 ration.	1cp
Shark Meat	So chewy, you might as well be eating leather. 1 ration.	1cp
Penguin Meat	Very gamey and stringy.  Good source of protein, but wow, penguins are vicious. 1 ration.	1bit
Walrus Tusks	This must have come from a large, robust beast. As Dagger.	2sp
Narwhale Horn	It has the appearance of a unicorn’s horn. Have you been lied to all your life? As spear.	5sp

This last example was for a campaign set in the underground of a post-apocalyptic dwarven kingdom. The vendor is what I considered a typical miner's vendor.

Headroom The Mining Store
Item	Description	Cost
Mining helmets	Complete with a section to hang a candle to see in the Dark!	20
Pickaxe	Made with tempered steel.  Robust!  Can act as a weapon (1D8/1 damage)	10
Rope	Hardy, cut to the desired length.  Use gloves with it, or the coarse surface will give you friction burns.	1 per 10ft
Hardened Crowbars	Sometimes you just need to prise a rock open with a bit of elbow grease and one of these (1D6)	5
Very reasonable explosives	Inflicts 1D6 damage.  5ft blast radius	15
Reasonable explosives	Inflicts 2D6. 5ft blast radius	30
Unreasonable explosives	Inflicts 4D6.  10ft blast radius	60
Irresponsible Explosives	Inflicts 10D6.  30ft Blast radius.	120
Sledgehammer	As a Warhammer.  Used to hammer supports into place to support unstable ceilings	7
Drill Slug Egg	Legally dubious to own.  This drill slug uses its grinding teeth and acidic saliva to burrow its way through the rock.  Dangerous!	1000

I hope that was helpful. Remember, all it takes to make your world more immersive is just a little bit of flavour here and there, which creates a mental image for your players. Over time, their mental image of your game world becomes more expansive, and their engagement increases.

Next time. Artefacts.

Creating a campaign part 2: Character creation

18, 18, 18 STR, CON, CHA

Introduction

A good campaign needs buy-in from the players from the very moment they show up at the table.  The best way to do that is have them immersed in your world from the moment of character creation.  By habit, for each new campaign, I try to include:

• The elevator pitch: A summary of the setting.

• Background primer: An overview of the types of societies and peoples in the setting.

• Bespoke backgrounds: A set of backgrounds made specifically for the setting.

The Elevator Pitch

To summarise, it is an overview of your setting that developed from your initial high-concept setting idea. In essence, it is you selling your campaign to your players, getting them excited and thinking about how their character may fit into this world you have created.

The pitch for Webrail went like this.

Webrail Elevator Pitch

''In the beginning, a thousand worlds were scattered into a million fragments and cast into the Abyss, an endless, starless void.

At first, people were isolated on their fragments, and many without resources warred or perished from famine.

Eventually, the spiders appeared, giant inscrutable beings that spun their webs and united the fragments together into a single network.

In time, the enterprising peoples of the fragments created trains, vast moving cities that moved from fragment to fragment, engaging in commerce and diplomacy. The Webrail was born.

However, the Abyss began to stir and change.  Demonic forces manifested across the Webrail and waged a war of extinction against all living things.  It was only put to a stop when the spiders spun great threads and descended into the darkness of the Abyss, from which they never returned.

Centuries later, the Webrail is rebuilding, and ancient trains still run across its network, but the spiders are long gone.''

Background Primer

Alongside your elevator pitch, give your players a short background primer.  This only needs to be a paragraph or two, and should describe the types of societies found within your world and how they contrast.

Webrail Background Primer

Your character is a citizen of the Webrail.  There are a huge number of diverse people.  Some live on the fragments, floating islands in the Abyss, and others will be citizens of the roaming city-states that are the trains.  Generally, the quality of life is much better on the trains as they have access to powerful technologies and magics. However, some larger settlements may have a comparable quality of life.

Technology levels are varied, from wild Stone Age tribes to steampunk locomotives.  However, due to the catastrophic nature of the demonic inundation, much knowledge was simply lost.  In many cases, technology is maintained, but the theoretical understanding of it is lost for the ages.

Bespoke Backgrounds

Many TTRPGs do character backgrounds really well.  Where possible, I create backgrounds which are tailored to the setting.  This means that when your players create their characters, they are choosing backgrounds that fit the themes of your world and allow them to think more deeply about how they fit within the setting.

A good bespoke setting should contain:

• The Profession Title

• Equipment they gain

• A question to answer about their character that should help create a dynamic background from the word go.

Scavenger A minor trinket of wonder. Question:  You have dared to walk into the ruins of the world before.  What did you see that made you weep for what was lost?

This first example is from a campaign where players took on the roles of pilgrims in a post-apocalyptic world.

• The scavenger starts with a minor magical item.

• And they have to consider what horrors are in the ruins, and how this might have affected them.

Outcast A ragged set of hides (AC13)] A makeshift Spear 1D6 A makeshift sling 1D4 or a mutation. Question: Someone is rarely cast out from their home and kin.  It must have been a terrible crime or prejudice that forced you out.  What was it?

This second example from the same campaign has a choice.  

They may start with additional equipment.  Or they can become a mutant, which may have benefits and drawbacks.

The character has been cast out of their home.  Perhaps they were shunned because of their mutation, or perhaps they have a terrible secret that was discovered.

Conductor A beautiful brass whistle Pocket watch Question:  You check everyone’s ticket.  No stowaways allowed.  However, there was that one time you found someone without a ticket.  It was a hard choice, but you had to make a decision.  What did you do, and why?

This example is from the Webrail campaign and is for a player who wants their character to have grown up on one of these vast city-sized trains.  Having no tickets in this world means getting kicked off the train.  In Webrail, it could have massive implications, and the question invites the player to reflect upon, further immersing them in the game world.

Linguist 3 additional languages  (You may choose these when you first encounter the language.) Question: The Webrail is a diverse place, and linguists are in high demand.  When did you prove your worth? Did you placate or fool a threat? Did you enable a great peace or trade? Or did you intimidate a foe into capitulation?

This final example is also from Webrail. It provides the character with some real skills.  It also makes the player think more deeply about the game world and how their character acted within it.

Summary

Your elevator pitch should be designed as a summary and a sales brochure for your setting, while your background primer and bespoke backgrounds are to immerse your players in the world from the moment they start making their character.

Next time, shopping.