For most tabletop RPGs, where players and the referee alike enjoy a fair amount of simulation and crunch¹ maps can be an important part of the game. Sometimes maps are just flavor, or props, and that is perfectly fine. In the front cover of many fantasy novels, there’s a basic map to give you the names of the various locations and how they relate to each other, but the author probably wasn’t thinking of exact scales or GPS precision accurate to 5 meters.² In many games though, we do include a scale, and a grid (for anything bigger than a village: a hex grid, almost always)³, and with some depiction of terrain, either artistically rendered or abstracted a bit, to colors and icons. A lot of gamers who came up the same time I did will remember the gorgeous two-piece four color 34”×44” wall map of Greyhawk⁴, from either the 1981 ‘folio’ or 1983 box set.

Map scales are arbitrary⁵ and generally come down to just two things: how big of a thing (province, kingdom, region, continent, world) did we want to represent on what is typically just a sheet or two of paper, and how do we ‘play’ the map.

Play is maybe more important: with that G in RPG, I’m still talking about games. But another pillar of RPGs is the idea that we are collectively telling a story, so sometimes we’ll make a map that is important for narrative (or for sparking imaginations) and not just because our board game needs a game board. I think we’ll cover both bases with this collection of scales, but there’s also a general trend in that as the scale gets bigger, our maps are more about story and less about simulation. Enough intro? That feels like enough intro.

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Scale One: 5 feet.

One inch = five feet and if you’ve played the game with 25mm or 28mm miniatures you are probably already very familiar with the game at this scale. This is how many of us set up and resolve combat (minis, and a few dice rolls) and as a D&D or Pathfinder player you’re probably also familiar with something like a 24”×36” vinyl mat with a square grid and your GM breaking out the dry-erase (or back in the day, wet-erase) markers. You can also buy a lot of professionally produced color maps at this scale — many sold in packs or as map tiles, intended to be used several at a time and shuffled around as needed. The latest in tech, Virtual Table Tops, also utilize maps at this scale that are either shared with players online via a video conferencing setup, or for those with the means, via a monitor or projector that brings the virtual back around again to a physical gaming table.

Five feet is melee range. Your move speed is most often listed as some multiple. Not everyone thinks of a battle mat or miniatures setup with cardboard and stand-in tokens as a map per se, but this is our smallest map scale.

Five feet may also be the first and last map scale nearly everyone agrees on. From here, I’m listing my preferences, and probably goes without saying but your mileage may vary⁶

Scale Two: Villages.

A village map usually isn’t a tactical map but nearly every starting adventure has one. The Village of Hommlet [AD&D Module T1] is one example that uses a square grid and a scale of one square = 20ft. (in most printings this adds up to 80ft. to the inch). The village of Phandalin from the D&D 5E Starter Set isn’t on a square grid but includes a map scale that’s roughly the same.

Village maps are typically, but not always, props for use at the table, to give players an idea of where they’re at and some of the relationships between buildings, locations, and NPCs. For this purpose, the Phandalin map is probably a better example than Hommlet. As a story-telling aid, a village map can be handy to show that the dour, loner NPC does in fact keep his distance from the rest of the village, or that a nearby abandoned shrine is probably somehow related to the village but definitely apart from it. I don’t think I’ve seen a village map broken down tactically to 5-foot scale so we can simulate street-by-street combat in an invasion or bandit raid scenario but now that I’ve typed that sentence I kind of want to play it? So I’ll probably be making that at some point.

There may be other examples that would be handy to map at this ‘village’ scale – for example, something like a full legion on the march and your players need a map of their encampment at the forest edge and river ford, so they can figure out how to infiltrate the camp. Or a castle siege. Or a small part of much larger city. But the purposes are usually going to be narrative over tactical, and involve a lot of gameplay and character actions that aren’t turn-by-turn combat.

In my own design space, I’d say anything still on graph paper instead of hexes and from 20 feet to 25 yards to a square fits as “village” scale.

Scale Three: Battlefield.

It is rare (in my experience) that a table-top RPG campaign gets to the point where two armies will meet on the battlefield and the players will want to wargame it – my bias is perhaps apparent in my choice of verb there, ‘war games’ are a different genre. TL;DR It’s 100 yards, and I’ll see you in the footnotes.⁷

Scale Four: Local Travel

Keeping with that TL;DR spirit, let’s lead with the lede: 6000 yards. That’s three miles — we have redefined our fantasy mile to be exactly 2000 yards, because we can, and because that other number (1760) is stupid.⁸ With a base walking speed of 3 miles an hour, a hex at this scale takes one hour to cross – that’s if it’s flat, level, not too muddy, & has a decent trail or basic road on it. You can take that and run with it.

Defining One Hex as being One League (3 miles) and taking One Hour works pretty well.

The basic measure to consider here isn’t any particular unit of distance but instead that unit of time. “How long do we have to walk to get to the Dungeon” has an impact over gameplay greater than knowing exactly how many furlongs, cubits, or Scandinavian miles that happens to be. Even when we handwave away a lot of exact details of travel, knowing the travel time will matter — how often will the party need to make camp, will there be random encounters, how likely is the party to get lost?

For local travel, especially low-level play that often takes place in a single small region around a starter town or other quest hub, being no more than a couple of days away from each dungeon-delve seems about right. One or two nights to camp, one or two days to roll for random encounters.

On an 8½ x 11 or A4 sheet of paper, and hexes in the neighborhood of 1cm in size, your party of adventurers could travel from the center of the map to any corner in one to two days of in-game time, maybe a week over really rough terrain, and then back again. This seems to work well for many starting campaigns with a ‘home base’ in an outpost, a fortress, a village, or a stargate/portal back home – mysteries and adventures await! …but mostly we’re back home in time for dinner.

I’m going to skip two, but we’ll come back to them. Scale Five is regional travel, Scale Six is that “wall map” I referenced in the intro and the footnotes. But I’m going to stick with 2000 yard miles for a minute and go all the way up to global scale.

Scale Seven: Global

One very handy unit of measure at global scale is the Nautical Mile, which is defined as one minute of latitude⁹ — 60 minutes to a degree so one degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles. A nautical mile is also really damn close to 2000 yards, which is handy because someone already redefined our fantasy land miles to be 2000 yards.

Using nautical miles and latitude is also handy at the global scale because latitude gives us a lot of information about average temperature, prevailing winds, and prevalent biomes – you know, for the world-building nerds who like that kind of thing. Scaling up to a map that has nice divisions at something like 10° is handy because those are also usually the lines on (real world) globes and world maps. So our global scale could be a Hex 10° or 600 miles tall. How we get from 3 miles to 600 to go from Local to Global is the question, and one where you might need more than one answer or option.

One that I’ve considered is 15s. I’ve worked up my own template, which you can download for free from mdotblind.itch.io/mdotblind-dungeon23

These are nesting scales. Building up from a local map, 3 mile scale, 15 hexes tall, each local map becomes a unit hex at Scale Five: Regional where hexes are 45 miles in scale and the whole map (15 hexes tall) is 675 miles.

At Scale Six: Wall Map we switch from printing at 8½ x 11 to poster size. And these would stich together as many of the roughly 8”×8” regional maps as might fit on our poster, while keeping that one hex = 15 league (45mi) scale. Something like the Greyhawk double wall map, 33” × 44”, would fit 18-20 regional maps, 80 by 100 hexes if those hexes are still 1cm or so in size¹⁰

Scaling by 15s is a compromise. But the Regional maps still span roughly 10° latitude, north to south. And a secondary design consideration was having a set of maps that nest, a way to zoom in and out.

This is what I’m using currently using for my own designs, and the 2023 world building project. I should have more to share once that work is done. I encourage you to build on this for your own projects. The one take-away I hope you do keep is to ignore the map scale advice in WotC’s Dungeon Master’s Guide and adopt 6000 yards: one hex, one hour, three sensible fantasy miles.

¹ “Crunch” is a common, and perhaps overly casual, way to refer to deep rulesets that try to cover as many eventualities of play as possible. Crunchy can be considered the opposite of “rules light” in some ways but it’s not a directly opposed design philosophy. “Simulation” in games is perhaps best illustrated by the use of miniatures and battle maps on the table. A lot of things are abstracted [e.g. hit points instead of specific wounds] but things like movement, positioning, cover, and ranges are simulated. This is the legacy of Chainmail and other proto-RPG war games, and reflected in combat mechanics especially. But “simulation” can also be the GM creating the geography, rivers, roads, and settlements and mapping them to scale, when things like travel can also be abstracted & just as easily handled by some narration and random encounter rolls. If I get around to a series of posts on game design I might dive deeper into both concepts. All that said: I do love me some Fantasy Maps.

² Tolkien’s map may be an outlier in this, given that so much of the actual plot of both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings is about travel. Both are literal road trip stories, ‘there and back again’. So his distances (probably) aren’t going to be exact but when it takes weeks to walk even part-way across his continent you definitely see that and feel that in his map. Tolkien also gets due props for the hand-drawn aesthetic and how his maps feel like in-world artifacts — arguably they’re also why we encounter so many maps in every fantasy novel that followed, and why we love to include them with our games.

³ Hex maps are another legacy from tabletop war games, with the earliest examples (probably) being a pair of Civil War simulations from Avalon Hill in 1961: Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, both designed by Charles S. Roberts. The 1961 version of Gettysburg updated a 1958 release and changed its maps from a square grid to hexes.

⁴ The “Darlene” map, from the artist of the same name [she professionally goes by the single name]. At the top of the post you’ll see a ‘thumbnail’ version of the wall map. And honestly, producing a map like this for a world of my own is a game design goal I’ve been chasing for a very long time.

⁵ our units of measure are just as arbitrary, but that’s a different rant/discussion.

⁶ yes, pun fully intended and of course I had to pull that phrase in somewhere in this post.

⁷ So we might consider a battlefield scale, with squads or companies or cohorts or maniples instead of individual combatants as a “missing middle” scale for RPGs. Not that we can’t make battlefield maps, it’s just that we usually don’t. In an RPG campaign, if a huge battle is coming up, the heroes are often off on a quest or sidequest, doing their usual D&D things, while the armies prepare off-screen in the background. The outcome of the battle no doubt hangs on what the party does behind the scenes (mcguffin found, allies raised, BBEG defeated in their lair) but the players and their characters aren’t taking up a battlefield command. But. To pick a scale, I’d think about how fast ‘units’ can move – 30ft per round, times 10 rounds per minute, and we’re at 300ft or 100 yards. 100 yards is a fairly intuitive distance for most, being roughly the length of a football field (US) or football pitch (everywhere else). Without getting too “crunchy” in writing some quick ad hoc rules in the footnotes of a blog post, units of roughly 100 taking a minute to move one square or hex, 100 yards, meeting along ‘fronts’ which are the borders between squares/hexes, and choosing actions like Push, Hold, Entrench, Charge, and then rolling dice.

⁸ I picked 2000 yard ‘miles’ for at least two other reasons, one of them making the math easier when scaling maps down and a second reason that we’ll get to soon when looking at maps at ‘world’ scale. However, if you’re a stickler for rules-as-written we can also get there a 3rd way: with a basic move speed of 30ft per six-second round, a character would walk 18,000 feet or 6000 yards (3.4 miles) in one hour. I’m perfectly happy to call a distance of 6000 yards a league and to redefine our fantasy miles to be exactly 2000 yards each – but (please forgive the 2nd invocation of the pun) your mileage may vary.

⁹ Latitude uses angular measures, degree-minute-second, where one degree is equal to one-360th of the circle measurement and that circle is the distance round the earth. Degrees are divided into 60 minutes, which are then also divided into 60 seconds. Longitude uses similar divisions but the meridians of longitude are not parallel — they all run through the poles and intersect there — so the degrees of longitude aren’t a consistent measure. Lines of latitude run parallel to each other (and are, in fact, called Parallels) and while each parallel of latitude gets smaller as you head north (or south) of the equator, they are always the same distance apart — 60 nautical miles per degree. The actual measure of the nautical mile is 2025.37 yards but again, using the magic of fantasy cartography, I hereby define it for my use as being exactly 2000. I guess the yards are 1% bigger or the whole fantasy planet is 1% smaller due to the prevalence of handwavium in the molten core, either excuse works.

¹⁰ The Greyhawk map has a scale of one hex = 10 leagues, 30 miles, for comparison. And I’m sure my approximation for what a wall map would look like is off because this is all just back-of-the-envelope math

Fantasy Faction:
The Lodge

Quick Sketch:

Many who have fled the wars have found a new haven, an old frontier province: up until a few years ago home to only a very few, the remnants of the original settlers, who now live in isolated villages and hamlets. Well away from Capitol—and even further from the Front—there are many abandoned homesteads here just waiting for the daring, or the desperate, to again till the land and repair the crofts and rebuild long tumbled walls and fences. This frontier borders The Deep Wood, a remnant of the Old Forest (or perhaps just its civilization-facing edge), green and thriving, though in other places dark and dense and overgrown; full of ancient mysteries green and damp and dank and foreboding. There are many tales among the villagers here about what lurks there, and proscriptions about where to build, where to gather fallen branches, and how far one can go into The Deep Wood

This chunk of Old Forest can be anywhere (file the serial numbers off, change the details to suit) but I might add at least one restriction: This wood has been avoided by any Elf or other woodland sentient species that Civilization (as understood by players and their characters) currently knows. There may be Elves in there somewhere (at GM discretion) but they are going to be different™.

With whole new towns springing up, and more refugees coming and settling closer and closer to the woodlands’ edge, there have been Incidents. Rumors of huge beasts (or huge somethings) coming out of the woods on moonless nights or in the dead of winter. Farmers and families disappearing, the homesteads found wrecked again and seemingly abandoned. People who go into the wood for firewood or to hunt game, and just… not coming back.

With the bulk of the armies away on various fronts, and with nothing like a local militia established given how few lived here up until recently, the only ones available to protect the settlers, investigate the mystery, find what riles the Green-Dark powers of the Old Forest, and perhaps save the towns and people of the newly re-established province, is The Lodge

The hunters and rangers who established The Lodge come from all over – some were already woodsmen, some are skilled warriors but just now discovering the difference between fighting on the plains and hunting in the woods, some come seeking answers and to take revenge—if revenge is to be had. A few have come to study The Green, for the sake of knowledge itself, or love of nature, or for personal power. Nearly all are welcome, if they swear to protect The Lodge, and each other, and the people outside the wood.

The Lodge, the building from which the band takes its name, is actually *in* the wood, a morning’s ride or a day’s hike away from the nearest town. It is now a huge undertaking, more keep than lodge (though still under construction), a combination inn and fortress, the four wings surrounding the courtyard, forge, and stable. With a foundation and a bottom story made of stone, the completed wings have two stories and an attic built in timber above. The forest around has been cleared to 75 yards on three of four sides, a little closer perhaps on the back where trees are still being felled (for that defensive perimeter, and construction materials both).

As a GM, you can choose to have your players encounter The Deep Wood, the frontier, and The Lodge at any point in the last 25 years – from its establishment on an actual hunting lodge, a single story building for perhaps 20 to eat and sleep, to the small keep it will eventually become. Your party can be the founders, literally coming to confront the unknown, or as new recruits to an established band, where the Captain and the officers are there to assign patrols and quests, with the support of a blacksmith, bowyer, fletcher, and quartermaster to keep the party supplied and in fighting trim.

The Secret of The Deep Wood is probably going to be the seed of a whole campaign, though one-off adventures might still take place here, if a call goes out for Heroes to hunt and kill a huge beast (and that’s it, XP GP here have a shiny bow thanks byeeee). Or the objective of our party might be to get through the wood, to chunk a bracelet into a chasm or whatever that eventual goal is, and so they stop by The Lodge to pick up an NPC ranger guide and take a long rest.

General Background:

For all party members, our base assumption is they are among the refugees fleeing the war who have now found themselves in this long-forgotten province on the forest’s edge. Some few might have backstories that originate here (growing up on a local farm before becoming an orphan is popular) but for nearly everyone else, any occupation or background should work. The characters might not even have a motive, or objective in coming here. This is very close to the stereotypical, “So you all meet in a tavern…”, but in this case it works. You could even start at the front door to The Lodge, everyone a new recruit, but it might be good to have an introductory adventure at the nearest town first, and a fight/encounter that leads to the party learning about The Lodge, and then making their way there

Our Associates:

[Player types, by class; suggestions for play – or for notable NPCs]

Ranger – The rank and file of The Lodge would be woodsmen, of course: Wardens, scouts, trackers, Strider from LotR and the Hunter class from WoW. You can play the class right out of the core rulebooks or d20/SRD pdf exactly as written. A creative player might have different specializations or a great background story or a new take on the class that will be fun to play or role-play, but a party of Oops All Rangers with no rogues, no pure fighters, and no other spellcasters except maybe a druid is a valid composition here.

Druid – Like rangers, druids are an obvious fit; though being so close to nature might present some internal conflicts, either within the player or within the party. Is our druid here to help us heal a wrongness that perverts the nature of The Deep Wood? Or are they more in tune with the wild gods and old spirits of this place, and find what The Lodge is doing to the wood to be, in itself, just as perverse? A lot of good options here. To keep a little of the mystery from even your most nature-connected character, one option might be to have the druid arrive from woods far away, with a deep connection to nature but little knowledge of whatever-it-is that lurks in The Deep Wood.

Barbarian – Barbarians are another class that can be played as written, with few if any modifications. It might be interesting if the origin and backstory of the Barbarian in the party is “some *other* remnant of the Old Forest, just Up North or Away South” so they can crack jokes about how, sure, that wolf was tough but back home they used to target womprats at least that size in their T16

Bard – ‘City Bard out in the woods’ is a fish-out of water setup with a lot of roleplay options but if we look at myth/literature for call backs we can easily find one good role model for Bards: Alan-a-dale, of Robin Hood/Merry Men stereotypes. (Be cautious or your party may end up as just a pastiche of the Merry Men, with Alan-bard and a Little John barbarian and a Friar Tuck cleric and… or you know what? lean into it. If the players are into it, you can see what a Robin Hood story looks like with Feral Wildgod Wolf Packs and Corrupted Entkind) – At least one Bard in the The Lodge makes sense, though [PC or NPC], as one is no doubt there to collect stories

Cleric – A healing cleric might have been sent by their bishop to tend to The Lodge, perhaps by request of a (distant) nobleman who gives money to both Church and Lodge, or via a divine dropping-a-hint-on-the-bishop mechanism. A cleric of a Nature god/goddess is also a natural fit, as would be a cleric of any fertility god/goddess, answering the prayers of provincial farmers just outside the woods. Even militant orders might find common cause, because there are huge beasts to fight and hey, they like to fight. In building a cleric for a campaign, the player could pick just about any origin, background, and devotion, who then arrives as a refugee (perhaps leading a small group to this haven away from the front) who then finds common cause with either Lodge or party.

Fighter – The only reason to play a fighter as opposed to a ranger (in this particular context) is for flavor reasons—as a better fit for a particular background story—or to be a min-maxing munchkin weapon specialist where the bonuses the fighter gets outweigh all the woodsy nonsense and random spell slots of the ranger class. Here are a few examples:

Fighter – The Tip of the Spear – The Lodge no doubt has a handful of beefy fighters with training in the long two-handed Boar Spear, a massive hunk of weapon that includes a cross-bar three feet from the blade to keep the boar (or warg, or dirething) from charging up the weapon while still impaled. When the patrols come back and report that A Hunt must be called, else this thing is going to eat a farm or bollocks up The Lodge itself, the ones in the front are the elite, the Tip of the Spear

Fighter – Shieldguard – When 85% of your troup composition is plinkers who use bows or dual-wielding swashers who dance and weave and occasionally forget about the friendlies behind them, having a few stout compatriots to get in there and tank the mobs and just generally give us all some cover are kinda necessary while also being underappreciated. Lodge Shieldguards are better trained in tactics than woodcraft and also form the core of the lodge defences, when every day (or even for days at a time) most of The Lodge is out on patrols.

Fighter – The Sniper – “While you were studying tracks and spoor, I studied the Bow. While you learned woodcraft and weather sign, I studied the Bow. While you learned stealth and spells and dueling and defense, I studied the Bow.” You know there’s at least one NPC at the lodge who practices 300 yard shots and blindfolded bulls-eyes and behind-the-back quickshots and splitting one arrow with the next, also in the bulls-eye, and probably also blindfolded. Feel free to make his comeuppance a minor plot point.

Monk – “You must go to The Deep Woods, there you will learn from the jedi mas- I mean the ki master who taught me” – A monk character would likely be a visitor to The Lodge, but perhaps one with reasons to stay. As a GM, I’d work with a player asking to play a monk in this type of campaign to develop a new class kit, “The Way of the Falling Leaf” or “The Green Ki” or “The Force”, with a strong preference for class abilities and bonuses that rely on the elements, some (but not all) of the animal forms, and the idea that the energies that flow through our bodies is the same that flows through all of nature. A monk of this disposition might even be drawn to The Deep Wood, to learn its secrets and to eventually found their own Way and Path and School.

Paladin – The Green Knight – The Nature Goddess had never needed a Paladin before, but the heart of the wood is unbalanced past her remit now, and the deep rot must be rooted out. Our knight was just another of many, fighting in the long war, one who fell in battle: a senseless, random encounter in a woodland near the front, left for dead but found by the Goddess. Long after the fighting had moved on, they awake, rising from a blanket of fallen leaves, to take up now-rusted arms and moss-covered armor, their shield boss entangled with vines that seem to form the branches-trunk-and-roots of a Tree of Life symbol. Our Green Knight emerges from the wood, and spends many weeks in recovery, tended at first by sympathetic farmers and later by clerics at a Temple of Life, who clean the weapons and armor, though both are now stained a green that cannot be removed. When the Knight has recovered, after many nights spent healing and dreaming and communing with the Goddess, a huge Elk with algae-tinged fur and mossy antlers arrives, and the Knight knows: now that their mount is here, it is time to depart. The clerics of Life bestow additional blessings upon them, and the Green Knight rides for the border province, The Lodge, and The Deep Woods

Rogue – Any rogue decent enough with two weapons, plus a little stealth, the ‘surefooted’ feat or ability, and a bent toward deceit could probably fake being a ranger. Especially in a community where every other NPC is an actual ranger and psfh who the hell needs to track anything or whatever five other guys do that. *WHY*, then becomes the question, but I’ll leave that to individual GMs, players, and parties to figure out. Though The Lodge probably has at least two types of rogues who aren’t hiding in their ranks:

Rogue – Trappers – an ability to detect traps and disarm them implies enough familiarity to also set any traps, and an expert along these lines would certainly be welcome; at higher levels these could supplement the defences but at lower levels: it probably means dinner. Or perhaps furs for trade, as The Lodge as both ‘keep’ and band sound kind of expensive to maintain. When drawn into a surprise encounter in the field or forced to defend The Lodge in extremis, the Trappers are still scrappers; a creative GM might give Trappers a “Cast Snare” weapon proficiency with any available rope, analogous to whips or lassos, allowing 1d4-2 damage and either a “distract” or “bind weapon” special action as a called shot, depending on if the shot is aimed at a the face, or the weapon hand.

Rogue – The Closer – Chasing down the prey, cornering it, bringing it to bay, even immobilizing it: for the largest of beasts, even all this might not be enough, and it is only a matter of time before the beast breaks from our temporary constraints and throws us aside. However, if we have someone crazy enough to direct engage the monster (from behind, but still: crazy to get that close) and dispatch it, bully for us and also probably someone good to have on staff. The “Closer” would be more of an assassin rogue build, with backstab bonuses and things like Death Strike at higher level, but context is important. Assassins are good actually, if they are team players and we need someone to close the deal on this encounter

Sorcerer – A wild mage might feel called to The Deep Wood, depending on the nature of their own chaos magic and whatever the GM determines might be behind the Green-Dark of the wood. Creative players and GMs might also lean into the “wild nature” of a Green Sorcerer kit and pull in druid and nature spells that might not otherwise be available to the class. It is also possible for a sorcerer to be “fae” touched (a parallel to other bloodlines) and that is the source of their magic (and also of the constraints that might be placed on it)

Warlock – If there is something deep in the Green-Dark of The Deep Wood it wouldn’t be too far out of line to think that power would reach out, and make a bargain. Or perhaps (at GM discretion) a player-character might be a researcher looking to make that bargain, perhaps with a thought to ‘tame’ the power, or at least to divert it from the innocents of the province beyond and toward some other purpose. Alternate warlock backgrounds might include powers seeking to contain the raw nature of The Deep Wood on either philosophical grounds or just to eliminate some local competition, or to control-subsume-merge with it.

Wizard – As always, if there is some mystery out in the world that can be described as vaguely magical, most assuredly there is some sort of magical researcher who is out there poking at it. That said: similar to many classes above, and in keeping with the general setting, a Wizard from any background might find themselves stuck here who will either find common cause with the provincials and The Lodge — or who will find individual motives that align with the party at least through this campaign. In an extreme case a GM might be forced to breadcrumb a lost mage tower somewhere in the woods, with scrolls and loot, to tempt this character out — but that’s par for the D&D course and nothing special

Other Encounters:

The Lodge is a coherent NPC faction with a strong theme, obvious place & time to encounter them, and a generic enough backstory (huge woodland aside) that they could be found in just about any campaign setting that has a similar mix of war, refugees, and a frontier to flee to. A party of PCs could need the help of The Lodge to get through the Deep Woods, could be helping The Lodge in a particularly hairy hunt, or could find themselves in opposition to The Lodge if the party’s interpretation of how to support and defend nature came into conflict.

In a combat encounter with The Lodge, first you have all the arrows, then the front line of a Shieldguard and Barbarian at minimum, then more arrows, then spell support from at least two casters, and more arrows, The Green Knight is slowly striding toward your position to eff you up, more arrows, at least one Rogue Closer already in the shadows behind you, and more arrows, and finally: they have at least one spell caster in reserve but they didn’t need it because More Arrows.

Last Time: Street Rats
Fantasy Faction: Up Next -
The Cabinet

Fantasy Faction:
Street Rats

Quick Sketch:
There is the city; it could be any city. OK, not just any city, this is a stereotypical RPG-flavored fantasy city that is vaguely Europeanish and has things like a city wall surrounding an Old City and a river and some docks and a market town (called Newmarket) just outside the city walls. The bad guys are either an occupying military force, the corrupt henchmen of a local power, or just the usual city watch: in this example I’ll call them the Guard. Our good guys are the poor and working class of the old city, living in a run-down neglected neighborhood I’ll call The Warren – not quite a slum, but not any good part of town either. There was an “Incident”, and now the street rats and toughs of The Warren are fighting the Guard.

You can change the details to suit either an existing setting, or use my quick thumbnail sketch as a launching point of your own. File the serial numbers off etc.

The Guard might be too far away from home to easily summon reinforcements (if occupiers) or not official enough to ask for help from The Crown (is there a crown? Maybe there isn’t an outside ‘national’ force to call for backup), or The-Perhaps-Nonexistent-Crown might have most of the ‘real’ army away fighting a war. For whatever reason, it’s an even fight, a temporary stalemate where the two sides face each other over barricades.

Our Heroes, the party, grew up in The Warren but now have to find ways to get food & supplies through the Guards’ blockade, need to find allies, and must discover a weakness or strategy to eventually win. Maybe they can call on the Crown? Like the old (but still serviceable) Robin-Hood-Prince-John-King-Richard setup – Or they just need to hold out long enough for the ‘siege’ to be lifted – Or maybe they grow and learn and skill up until they can win by guile or force of arms.

It might also work out that the party can “win” but then have to leave the city, the only world they know, and get launched out into the wide mysterious unknown of the rest of the continent, depending on what kind of campaign you’re looking for.

General Background:

For all party members, our base assumption is they grew up in the city and live and work there. They can be any age or occupation that vaguely fits that baseline, or your players can get creative with backstories (growing up on a farm before becoming an orphan is popular) that might allow other gameplay options.

Our Associates:

[Player types, by class; suggestions for play – or for notable NPCs]

Rogues – In this time of unrest and trouble, the rouges are our frontline skirmishers and brawlers, fighting with a dagger or less – not members of the illustrious guild, those folks have real skill (and a certain amount of status). A rogue of this party is just a street rat, though they might aspire to being an actual thief & member of the guild in good standing.

All of our street “fighters” are just rogues and young punks and the sort of small-time petty criminals that, if circumstances were different, would be fighting each other over turf and scraps. None are really fighters, never having the training even the rawest military recruit gets. [Three options for PC/NPC Fighters are given below; see also Barbarian, next:]

Barbarian – Brute Squad Street Tough – (Yes I am specifically thinking of Fessik from The Princess Bride) A lot of people are fighting in the streets now, but just a few take to it with such… gusto. Brute Squad members will fill the role of a berserker, but only when driven to it by extreme circumstances. Until the odds are really against them, they put the tough in “street tough” and use their unarmored defense bonus and uncanny battle senses to act as literally muscular shields for the other, less beefy fighters and all the innocent bystanders

Bard – Trash-talking Rap Battler – The Street Bard can use cutting words to not just distract or confuse, but to literally taunt opponents into blind fury attacks, ignoring any odds (and the Bard’s allies) lowering their effective armor class and giving any strike an attack advantage. The ‘College’ for street bards is The School of Hard Knocks; some of the Lore is different and there may be more weapon proficiencies, feats of acrobatics, dance, and evasion than spells, but a Bard is a Bard even if their chosen instrument is voice and rhyme.

Cleric – Street Medic – Once just a bystander, perhaps a barmaid or apprentice, who jumped in to drag away the wounded from the fray, the medic has been called to Serve. While completely unschooled and untrained, at least so far, they serve as a direct conduit and can channel healing spells they don’t even know the name of yet. [GM Note: taking into consideration the lack of weapon skills and actual priest training, you might work with the player of the Street Medic and allow them to start two levels above the rest of the party, but with the understanding ahead of time that the bonus levels will need to be “relearned” (or as role-played: actually learned for the first time) so additional leveling will be much slower]

Druid – The Rat King – the Rat King has never left the city, he doesn’t know the secret languages or druid signs; he might not even recognize himself as a druid. He used to be a “mudlark”, one of the orphans who picked the exposed river banks at low tide for a dropped copper or some other bit that might have value. Through that he got to know the rhythms of nature (even inside these city walls) and eventually came to understand what Wild there was here, in alleys and sewers and walled-off gardens. His Wild Shape is a giant ratform – one he uses so seldom it is an urban myth – but his friends the rats are everywhere. Sometimes it seems like he can even speak with them. Not just rats, but snakes and birds, and he is also unusually good with ponies, cart mules, and livestock, though the huge horses of the Guard just snort and paw the ground at him

Fighter – “Here Comes Our General” – She rose above the crowd very early in the fighting, through a mix of luck and a few key shrewd decisions, in one of the very first clashes. She survived, and saved a few others besides; several of those now loyally follow her lead. Somewhere she found a heavy knife long enough it might pass for a short sword, and uses a stout walking stick in her off hand mostly to block, but also as a way to rally the toughs and point to objectives, over the din and noise. A colorful scarf was soon added, as a “banner”, and she wears a matching one around her head. Relying more on raw charisma and natural talent, with a gift for tactics, Our General is untrained in arms but is being given many opportunities to practice.

Fighter – “I used to be an adventurer, before I took an arrow to the knee”. Some folks in The Warren most assuredly used to be something else before settling here, and (at GM’s discretion) an actual Fighter might be part of the party, a wounded veteran or a codger well past being called back to active duty. [Similar to our Street Medic, the GM might grant two levels over the rest of the party but in exchange for a negative attribute modifier, due to age or scars, and a slower base movement speed, perhaps an “old wound” that can be overcome with some sort of willpower check in dire need but at a hit point & endurance cost]

Fighter – The Defector – Maybe a younger, rookie member, new to the Guard and given no reason for either personal or professional loyalty, decides to leave the Guard and join the rats. He has had training; he is probably much more proficient with weapons than any street tough, but even if he could bring his gear with him when leaving, he probably can’t wear any of the armor or use the shield, for fear of being mistaken for the Guard-he-was and stabbed in the back. Oops. Sorry bro, my mistake. The defector would need a really good reason™ to switch sides (it’s usually the romantic subplot) and even with good reasons, will be met with suspicion and distrust. As an NPC, this might be solved by finding a way for the defector to safely leave town (with their love, assuming that was a mutual thing). As a PC option, this might work as a way to bring in a new player who joins the campaign a few sessions after it started.

Monk – The “Holy Beggars” are by tradition restricted to the plaza between the Council House and Temple Row, though many practice outside the city walls among the many markets and the caravaners’ tent bazaar. They are not “holy” in the sense of feeling either divine favor or a call to serve, but because in seeking alms they perform ‘miracles’, like fire-eating, or handling snakes, or lying on a bed of nails, or contorting themselves into all sorts of shapes. Their skin is tough, they are flexible to the point of seeming unjointed, they seem impervious to fire and poison, and they are pissed off. It is unknown what the Guard did to rile the bottled fury of the entire “Order” of Holy Beggars but they are a force unmatched in the rioting. Literally vaulting over the heads of others to tangle and engage the Guard as flying balls of limbs and fists and striking feet, spinning on the ground or flipping backwards or seemingly drunk, but always hitting from an unforeseen angle and seemingly always out of reach for any counterattack.

Paladin – Sign-carrying Street Prophet – before The Incident, he was just another crank, another beggar, living off alms and spending daylight hours banging a stick against a pot, intoning “The End is Nigh” while slowly walking a circuit around the city, or occasionally (as penance, he says) walking the entire outside perimeter of both the Old Walled City and Newmarket. Since the rioting started, he has changed aspect almost entirely (when did he get so tall? did he used to just always walk hunched over?) and he wears the pot-as-helmet on his head. His stick he traded for a stout cudgel, and he will be found leaping barricades while shouting his new battlecry “Your End Is Here!”

The Rangers – Sling Urchins – There are so many orphans, since the war, and not enough to care for them. They form packs, almost feral, looking out for each other and taking care of the youngest. Some get by as mudlarks, gleaning the banks at low tide. Others pick over trash tips and discarded junk outside the markets and caravan wagons, or steal bits of food to survive. They must be careful, and quick: orphans have been snatched up by the Guard, to be sold as an apprentice or farmhand, forced to “honest” work (at least until they can escape again). Or worse. The orphans do not say why, but one particular gang hates the Guard, their natural enemy, more than most. One or two of these are always trailing groups of Guard, unseen, to find opportunities for tricks, or theft, or injury – and sending runners to Our General to let her know always what the Guard are up to. What used to be a game for bored kids, slinging stones at birds or rats, has become a harassment technique now: stones and well-shaped shards of broken pottery are being flung with force and accuracy, often finding the gaps in helms or the exposed throat of those unwary.

Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard: A wild magic user suddenly appearing among our roguish skirmishers, or an otherwise weak street fighter given a chance at real power through an otherworldly bargain, would not be too out of place, but talking to you as one GM to another: I would be careful. At this level, of unorganized brawls in an urban setting, anyone bringing real magic to this fight is likely going to shift the balance to the point where there is no balance anymore. Any escalation would likely quickly be met by the Guard (would have to be matched, from a storyteller’s perspective) and we could quickly burn down the whole city.

[GM note inside the GM note: All plans gone awry, the city on fire, a person who must be found in the chaos, a magic mcguffin AND innocents who must be protected – that sounds like a fantastic capstone adventure to this low-level urban mini-campaign and you should find a cliffhanger in it and split it over at least two sessions]

If a player wanted to bring a magic user of just about any flavor, you might ask if they would take the role-play opportunity of a dual-class character, leveling once or twice as a rogue before The Event (sidequest!) that leads to them becoming a Sorcerer or Warlock. The scholarly, wizardly option might be effectively closed as a path, if we assume our urchins and street rats are illiterate. (An old Wizard NPC who must be found/rescued/persuaded to help for some special circumstance the party can’t otherwise overcome would probably be a nice mini-quest too, maybe good for two or three sessions)

Other Encounters:

The street rats are a coherent NPC faction with a strong theme, obvious place & time to encounter them, and a generic enough backstory that they could be found in just about any smallish city that has a similar conflict in place. A party of PCs could be mercenaries brought in to reinforce the Guard, adventurers passing though who just happened to be using the city and a tavern in The Warren as their base of operations, or agents of (did-we-decide-there-was-a-Crown-or-not-I-forget) the Crown who are sent to find facts and restore order.

No matter the set-up, telling your party they face two beggars, three kids, and a wiry teen dressed in what are those, rat pelts? and then being taken down by a hail of sling bullets, a Holy MMA Beggar, a swarm of rats, and the Zealot Pothelm Paladin braining your lead fighter with a stick while shouting “Your End Is Here!” will probably teach them something about underestimating opponents – or make them paranoid in every “innocent” city encounter from that session on. Either way: Win!

Next Week’s Fantasy Faction
The Lodge