Hi All,
I'm getting ready to run an adventure that I hope to turn into a campaign. I'd like to have a nearby town for PC R&R, and am looking for a good sourcebook. Any suggestions?
Ideally, the town would give enough info to bring certain areas to life, without bogging me down with too much detail. I really don't care about the town's history, or about the monster that lives at the end of the dungeon crawl beneath the sewers, or about rules for gambling. I don't need stats for every last NPC either. I'm okay with having a few weirdos stashed away in their respective homes or places of business. Mostly I'd like detail on the areas where the PCs are likely to spend the most time, i.e. the tavern / inn.
Thanks in advance!
-Stephen
Oh, and a good brothel would be nice too. :)
Why not just use the sample settlements in the back of the Gamemaster's Guide? They provide a settlement stat block and a couple interesting NPCs. You flesh it out as much as you want and they're generic enough to add anywhere.
Otherwise
Szelenvar
NG Small Town
Corruption +1; Crime +1; Economy +2; Law +0; Lore +2; Society -1
Qualities Defensible, Rumor Mongering Citizens
Government Autocracy
Population 600 (540 humans; 30 dwarves; 15 elves; 15 others)
Notable NPCs
Primess Midwife Berdine “Mother” Mayhew (CE female human cleric [Lamashtu] 5)
Creepy Head Priest of Abadar Nodwick Prynne (LN male human cleric [Abadar] 7)
Knowledgeable Taverner Mylvinn Minwhistle (NG male halfling bard 4)
Marketplace
Base Value 1000 GP; Purchase Limit 5000 GP; Spellcasting 4th
Minor Items 3d4 Items; Medium Items 1d6 items
Szelenvar is a small, walled town set up on a high bank overlooking the Silverill River.
The idea of Szelenvar is that Mother Mayhew are a built in cult of Lamashtu - you can use that for whatever you want. Otherwise it's a small town perfect for 1st level adventurers; there's rumor-mongering citizens who blab rumors/plot hooks, the town is proud of it's defenses making it a decent place to earn a living during Downtime and you can even get some bonuses for being a criminal here.
What's your new campaign about?
It'll be a bunch of dungeon crawls in the surrounding territory. Caverns, old tombs, maybe a graveyard or two. That sort of thing.
Thanks, but I'm not really looking for a stat block. I'm mostly looking for some good flavor text. It'd be good to have a few interesting location and character descriptions, and maybe a rough floorplan of the tavern. Just enough to let the players feel like they're retreating to a "real" place, if you get my meaning?
-Stephen
Try and get hold of a copy of L1 "secret of bone hill" the town of restenford should do the trick has a map of the town lists the people note and has basic information about the town as well as a few maps of main buildings I've used it loads of times.
You will need to update npc stats to PF but that's about it
I'll second Sandpoint. It's certainly well developed, with lots of locations to visit and NPCs to talk to. It's come up in more than one Paizo product, so it's gotten a lot of attention and development. You could just lift the whole town and put it into whatever adventure you're planning to run.
I think Belhaim from 'The Dragon's Demand' is a similarly scaled small-town, good-to-go-to-between-minor-adventures kind of place. It's not quite as fleshed out as Sandpoint, but it has a really nice stat block that describes who lives in which buildings, what they do, their starting attitudes, and their general disposition. I've GM'd two tables for this so far, and it's made playing the people of Belhaim a pleasure. My players have grown attached to the little town and its troubles. You could even cannibalize parts of the adventure to suit your own needs, depending on what level challenges you're looking for.
Though I'm not sure it actually has a brothel...
The bones of an ancient, ruined keep loom on the heights overlooking the town of Hinterstadt. It is from these bones that the town was made. The repurposed stone helped settlers build here in the wilds of the borderlands.
Now Hinterstadt has survived more than a hundred years in the shadow of the fallen keep. The town has grown into a prosperous market. It is a destination for adventurers; though the ruins have been explored and cleansed of evil for decades the crumbling walls and wild growth occasionally shelter brigands or goblins.
Hinterstadt is modest in size, being a mere 2500 souls in residence though it often swells with traveling merchants, adventurers and pilgrims. It has been built in the old, gothic style; arches and iron spires for the wealthy while the commoners survive in timber and fieldstone. A few main lanes passing through the Riverside Market are paved in cobblestone; the rest of the town is a network of gravel-packed earthen lanes and alleys winding through the closely-built homes and businesses.
The town is built on the upper bank of the Wintersweep River. Across the river stretches the great Forest of Winterhaven, a boreal woodland of pine, spruce and birch mingling with stands of darkwood. Though the townsfolk cross the multi-arched bridge known as the Elderspan to hunt and trap along the outskirts of the wood Winterhaven remains shrouded in darkness and danger to most. The evil driven from the ruins and wilds has collected here and clings to the woods like a pall. Goblins, witches and worse are known to inhabit the sprawl of Winterhaven.
The people of Hinterstadt are for the most part tolerant to travelers. There is little open crime here to speak of though occasionally darker forces take root in the town. Hinterstadt is governed by the Lord Mayor who maintains a court and acts as the justice of the town; he is aided by a council of advisors largely drawn from the notables within the Crafters and Merchants League, the guild for those skilled in crafting and professional trades. Finally there is the Sheriff of Hinterstadt who maintains a modest force of town guard and together they patrol the fields and meadows surrounding the settlement.
The businesses of Hinterstadt over the years have learned to cater to adventurers. There are alchemists and herbalists; smithys and bookbinders. There are no established "magic shops" here though a few personages of Hinterstadt have either the faith, blood or skill to dabble in eldritch arts and they add their talents to their wares. Magic, both divine and arcane are as common as in other regions but they are seen as a luxury and not employed in daily life. Still it is not unheard of for a weaponsmith to have a single magic axe among their arms or perhaps for a general store to stock a few potions sharing the shelves among old blankets and repurposed backpacks.
The faith of Hinterstadt is born of its earliest days. The first settlers here brought with them the worship of Pharasma and Abadar in their more natural aspects over earth, water, death and defense. These tenets spawned the Ironspire Cathedral; a sprawling complex part temple, part hospital with a graveyard for the common folk and private mausoleums for the notables. Some of these act as the entrances to the crypts burrowed deep in the bedrock. Other faiths have taken hold here, imported by adventurers over time, specifically the Lucky Drunk and the Dawnflower. Outside of town a different kind of church, known as Staghorn Lodge is both a waystop for foresters plying their trade around Winterhaven and a watchful eye on the forest itself. Here rangers and woodsfolk pay homage to Erastil and beg his blessings on their work. Finally there is an ancient runestone in the hills some distance from town, known to the populace as Desna's Hand. Every summer strange butterflies collect on the stone's surface and many primitive markings on the stone are attributed to an ancient sect of her faith. Desna therefore is offered prayers now and then by the folk of Hinterstadt and the town often sees pilgrims passing through on the way to the stone.
So Hinterstadt then is a place of beginnings. The road and the river pass here; the ruins to the south provide some adventure for those seeking it; the Forest of Winterhaven to the west is reached by the Elderspan and presents even darker challenges. The land just outside the walls of Hinterstadt is old and overgrown with many tiny clefts, fissures and caves buried under mossy meadows, rugged hills and gnarled roots.
Something more like this, or is that too much?
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Sandpoint is a really great town to use as a base for adventuring and the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition has a section about the hinterlands also that is quite well done and provides lots of hooks for adventures. However, the book is a little pricey for just the info about Sandpoint, of course, there is a ton of adventure material you could hack apart and use as you wish.
Alternatively, there is Towns of the Inner Sea, which seems designed specifically to provide exactly what you are looking for. I haven't had the opportunity to look into the book so I can't really speak for how fitting or useful the material will be for you, but it seems worth looking into considering the price and high rating.
There are a couple modules I can speak to having really interesting towns included with them. Feast of Ravenmoor has the town of Ravenmoor, which may be a tad small for your tastes but is a really interesting locale, especially if you don't reveal the cult angle and just kind of let it fester in the background. There is also The Dragon's Demand which has the town of Belhaim, a rich and engaging location akin to Sandpoint with interesting people. Also the plot of the module isn't woven into the town like Feast of Ravenmoor so it is more easily decoupled. When I ran this my players decided to stay in town and set up residence, so it was fun. Plus, the module comes with a nice map you can use for player reference.
As a final note, there is The Snows of Summer, which includes the sister towns of Heldren and Waldsby, connected via a magical portal that could double your adventuring possibilities.
Not sure if you're still looking for a good settlement source, but Raging Swan press has a great book called Village Backdrops. It has a few villages all ready to go, with flavor and crunch. Very useful for dropping a complete town anywhere in your fantasy/Pathfinder campaign. They have a free version of the product that has a lot of information, might even be enough for what you're looking for. I've found Raging Swan's material to be of high quality, and would highly recommend it. :)
My 2cp
If you want the official Sandpoint write-up, but don't want to buy the $50 Runelords AE hardback, you could buy the PDF of the original Pathfinder #1: Burnt Offerings for $14.
It includes a map of the hinterlands, but scant little information about them. (The full hinterlands write-up is in Pathfinder #2.)
Oh, and Sandpoint does indeed have a brothel, "The Pixie's Kitten."