How to make your custom towns memorable.

[CritConfirm]

More than once has I been presented a generic town in my local RPGs. The buildings are nameless, there are no defining features, and the NPCs are all generic Bills and Bobs.

My question is, how do you guys make your towns memorable? What are some of your most memorable towns that you've ever created and why? What is advise that you would give someone who was interested in making their town one to remember?

Tips and Tricks for Making Memorable Towns

[foolsjourney]

Just a quickie, on my way out for a few hours, but marking to pick up later.

Generic can be good if all the GM wants is a broad brushstrokes enclave that the players are not going to spend much time in, and they want simplicity over definition.

I'm currently working on my own town (I'll pm you the URL if you're interested), and the thing I would say to others is this- if your town is for sandboxing, however much you think you'll need in your town, double it. Quadruple it even. If you're not doing it because you love worldbuilding, then reconsider, because it can be very time and energy consuming.

The players need to be invested in the town if you've any chance of them to interact with it. Get players to write up a backstory for their characters, and give individual players knowledge about the town and its characters based on their character bio. Perhaps even misinformation about characters. Not everyone will know everything about everyone, even if they live in the same town. If their character is a visitor to the town they will know less about the local politics and customs, but will perhaps know more about what is going on just outside, or in neighbouring towns.

Mike

[DM_Blake]

Read the Belgariad. Seriously.

David Eddings made locations and populations just as memorable as the main characters in his books. I can name countless places from other books (Gondor, Lankhmar, Helium, Tarantia, Adrilankha, Amber, King's Landing, Mos Eisley, etc.) but none of them stand out as much as the locations in David Eddings' works.

As an author myself, I've analyzed his books to figure out his secret. Turn's out, it's simple. He focused on one thing. Just one. One defining characteristic that made a location unique from other locations. Then he build on that characteristic and infused the whole location with it.

For example, Arendia is a feudal land with a noble people (Mimbrates) who conquered and rule over the Asturians. The Mimbrates are characterized by their unbreakable loyalty to their feudal system and the best of them are the truest knights in the land. Eddings latched onto this characteristic and then built the people (serfs, peasants, knights, lords, nobles) with this characteristic in mind, then built the country around this feudal system with Mimbrates in charge and Asturians seething under their rule. And once he had that image firmly in his mind, he could then describe places and people quite easily, and so memorably that I remember this stuff even though it's been decades since I read the books.

Read them. Enjoy the story (it's a good one). But focus on how he brings people and especially places alive.