Create a Homebrew Campaign | #2: Micro View
Introduction
Welcome to the second session in this series on creating a homebrew world and campaign for a tabletop game! In the previous session, we created the big-picture view of the world, forming a map with multiple points of geographic interest. At the end of the article, I advised that you name your map’s regions. In this session, we’re going to zoom into the map and focus on one of those regions and one population center within it. You should select a region that has a few interesting features to it, rather than something that is less interesting like a grassy plain or desert. Those can be made interesting, of course, but we want to pick an area that’s interesting right from the start, for this. Note that this is going to be where we write the first arc, too, so keep that in mind when selecting the region you’re going to focus on.
Gurkiza is the name of the region that I’ve chosen for this exercise. There are three big cities here, a few towns, and numerous scattered villages or smaller settlements. A combination of rivers, lakes, bays, mountains, hills, and the canyon to the east make this a very diverse region of the map that I created. There’s a ton of potential in this area, so I’m excited to get started.
As was the case with the last post, resources for this session can be found linked at the bottom of the post. Additionally, if you'd prefer to watch a video version of this content, you can do so here:
Defining Geographic Landmarks
The first thing you should do is take note of any geographic landmarks that are present. I’ve got a number of them here. I have two lakes, a vast bay, a river… there’s a lot. I want to name the most important parts of this region, which I’ll do here, now. I’m sticking with the same naming scheme that I came up with before--again, if you want to watch a great video on nomenclature, definitely take a look at Hello Future Me’s video on the topic. I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m going to go through and add several names to this region. Anything that is large enough to stand out on the map of this area is worth having a name of some kind, so this could take thirty minutes to an hour. Add names to each of your features, as well. As you go, consider taking notes on why you named something that you did. Is it the shape of it? Did a historical event take place there? Was it previously called something else and now the name has been altered and turned into some sort of Frankensteined version of the original name? These notes will help to inspire ideas for you, later on.
The Settlement
Once you have everything named and you have an idea of what some of the key features of your region are, it’s time to get started on the main focus of this session: our first population center. Make sure you pick one that you think can be made especially compelling, as this is where we will be setting the first arc. It’s where our players are going to meet and where they’ll be spending much of their time in the first few sessions of the campaign.
Note that a population center doesn’t have to be large to be interesting. In my current campaign, the first five or six sessions took place in a very small settlement with only about a hundred total people in the local populace. Despite its size, a considerable amount of storytelling took place here and there was a lot for the players to interact with. I would even argue that the settlement was more interactive than a large city would have been because I spent more time fleshing it out.
For this, I’m going to pick a location that would be of medium size. These large, circular marks are going to be cities, but the diamond-shaped marks represent my towns that are more in the average range in terms of the population count. This will give me plenty of room to play around without making me feel like I have to write a ten-page novel about the location to ensure it’s properly fleshed out.
Once you’ve chosen your location, give it a name, and let’s dive in. I’m calling mine Kessit and I intend to use the river as a focal point in the town, with a bridge connecting the island to the mainland. This will make it easy for the players to orient themselves as they travel the town, as well as give me an easy way to break the town into sections and districts. With a name in place and an idea already started in my head, I’m going to move on to the next step, where I fill out a form that I use for all of my cities.
Settlement Information Form
When drafting the regional map for my second campaign, I devised a form for myself that I found to be extremely useful in creating very quick, informative details about the location. I went through and filled one of these out for every settlement right at the beginning of the map formation. I’m going to quickly break down and summarize each field of the form, here. A link to download this form for yourself will also be included in the description so that you can get a copy for yourself, or you can always make your own!
Settlement Details
This section is pretty easy to fill out and will give you a great place to start with your settlement, regardless of its scale. You may need to do some real-world research to get an idea of how to fill out certain aspects of this form, particularly the population size. I generally look at locations in the real world that are about the size that I want for a particular location in my fictional setting.
Population
This refers to the number of people in the location. This for me is just a rough number, but I do try to make it something that is inexact just for my own sake and sense of realism. I want about 6,000 people in this town, so I’ll put in… 5,861. See? Doesn’t really mean all that much to have it be such a specific number, but it does help it seem more believable and alive.
Demographics
Next up is demographics. I break these down by percentages. This is something that I’ve found can make your town more alive, believable, and easy to describe. Some of them will be melting pots for many different fantastical races, others will largely feature one race in particular with a few others scattered about. Some of them may even feature only one race, being home exclusively to one race that is prejudiced against others.
This town is going to be a little diverse, but mostly human. These percentages are just my best guess based on how I want it, but I’m thinking 58% human, 18% half-elves, 17% halflings, 5% gnomes, 2% other.
Appearance
This isn’t where you’ll write a paragraph or more about the location. Here, I try to write one line that gives a simple idea of what the area might look like. To describe this one, I’ll simply say “primarily small buildings, lots of water features, irrigation, and watermills, with the bridge as the most prominent landmark”.
"Primarily small buildings, lots of water features, irrigation, and watermills, with the bridge as the most prominent landmark."
Appearance Description for Kessit
Economy
Just as was the case with the appearance, the economy part of the form isn’t where you’ll go into detail about how the economy is. Try to keep this as a one-line summary about how prosperous the settlement is. Kessit has a harbor and plenty of land for farming, plus a lot of water power, so it’s doing fairly well. However, it isn’t very old, so I’m going to say that the economy is about average, but growing steadily.
Square Kilometers
This one I found to be really important. Your players need a solid idea of how large a location is, and so do you. You also need to know how it would compare to some of the larger cities. If your player characters have only ever been in a tiny village that’s about a square kilometer in size and then they go to the big city for the first time and it’s twenty or fifty times their village’s size, that’s truly crucial.
I’d recommend looking up real-world locations that are about the size you’re looking for with your settlement. For the town of Kessit, I’m going to make it about six square kilometers. It’s got a sizable population and is somewhat crowded, but has room to expand into the surrounding hills.
Demonym
This is simply what people who live here are called. You don’t have to put this, but I find that it’s helpful information. It gives you a word that you can toss casually into conversation. For the people from Kessit, I’m just going to call them… Kessan. Seems to fit and it’s straightforward. Easy enough!
Banner
This next one is something I made specifically for the campaign I’m currently running, where each settlement in the area flies a specific banner with unique colors. For this map, it’s so large and sprawlings and there are so many settlements that not all of them would need a banner. They’d likely fly the banners of the nearest city of significant size. If I were doing a larger city I’d describe their banner and colors here, but Kessit has no need of one, so I’ll just write that they’re bannerless and be done with it.
Government
This is where you’ll summarize how the local government works. I try to keep this limited to one paragraph--it’s not where you write about the individuals in the government specifically--that will go in the Notable People section, which we aren’t filling out in this episode as that’s being saved for a later article.
Instead, this is where you summarize how the government works and any important elements regarding it. For example, this might be where you write that the government’s corruption and fear have led to the mass incarceration of spellcasters in your society. To summarize, this section is where I would summarize both how the local government is intended to work and how it actually works.
Kessit will be a plutocracy, owned and operated by a few powerful merchants who manage the entirety of the town. It started as a trading post and has grown from that, and no government has been truly defined. Merchants have instead taken a stake in Kessit and use it as an additional revenue stream, charging fees for use of the docks, operating a few farming businesses in the town, and creating local job opportunities for the town’s population.
You can be as detailed as you like, but I prefer to keep this description short and poignant. Things like key players, historical information, and rebellion efforts could be written later on in the points of interest or notable people section or these details could be drafted in a relevant story arc.
"As a merchant-owned plutocracy, Kessit doesn’t have a solidified government. Instead, the river town is operated by a few distinct merchants who charge fees for use of the docks, operate farming operations in the town, and hire new workers from the local population to increase their production and profit."
The Government of Kessit
Layout
Here, you’ll describe the layout of your town. You can be as detailed or general as you like. I prefer being specific and even go so far as to create entire maps for these towns and cities. I think that the layout is important because your players need to be able to orient themselves within the town or city. Depending on the size, you can divide it into districts and make notes of specific landmarks so that players can remember key points in the town. I would suggest adding these landmarks to the Points of Interest list, which isn’t being covered in this session but will be discussed later on in the series.
Drafting a layout for Kessit turned out to be pretty easy! There’s a large landmass at the bottom of the mountains and a bridge over the river that leads to an ait (which is a small island). The leaders of this settlement have reserved the island for the finer parts of the town. Nice houses, extravagant courtyards, defenses, and other features greatly distinguish the island across the bridge from the mainland. Apart from that, the harbor has been a significant investment by the merchants to ensure that traders find doing business there to be worth the fees.
The rest of the town is a bit disheveled and mainly used as farmland, so there are many cottages clustered together, some small shops carrying the bare necessities, and then many stretches of farmland, some water mills, and more.
In your layout description, note what sets parts of the town or city apart. This is a bit harder to do with a tiny village or the beginnings of a settlement with a few buildings, where the landmarks would just be any of the buildings that aren’t someone’s home. In a settlement of considerable size, though, there will be points that you can mention to your players to help the area feel believable and give them things to remember about it.
I’ll be mentioning the island, the bridge, the harbor, the cluster of cottages, and the expanse of industrial farmland that is lined with irrigation systems and mills.
"Kessit is divided into two parts: the mainland and the ait. The ait is where the wealthier members of Kessit reside and spend their time, enjoying extravagant shops, beautiful courtyards, expansive homes, and the town’s greatest defenses. A beautiful stone bridge links the ait to the mainland. At the bridge’s base, where the bridge connects to the mainland, is a vast and well-maintained harbor. The harbor is the greatest investment of the merchants who run Kessit, as this is their primary source of income. Significant effort is made to ensure that harbor runs smoothly and efficiently, promoting it as a great place for traders to do business.
The mainland stands in sharp contrast to the beauty of the ait. Cottages are small and clustered together. Shops carry only the essentials needed for the populace to survive, and beyond winding, unkept streets of the mainland are stretches of farmland designed to be as efficient and productive as possible, dotted with advanced irrigation systems and mills."
The Layout of Kessit
Geography
Geography should be pretty straightforward because we have our map to work on. You already have a solid idea of what the surrounding and local geography will be like, so it should be easy to describe. If you’re having trouble, consider finding a town or city that is located in a region similar to yours.
Kessit is around thirty or forty kilometers south of a vast, mountain range. It’s surrounded by hills, there’s a forested area to the north, and the river opens into an enormous lake nearby. Even with the poor shape that some of the cottages may be in for the time being, Kessit is beautiful. This location is going to be gorgeous. Imagine standing on the elaborate stone bridge and staring out at the sunset on the other side of Lake Sani. This should be a breathtaking sight. I don’t mean to fantasize about my own town, but come on. This is a gorgeous area with incredible views, it’s the perfect place to build a town. I’m going to make notes of all of that here in the geography details. I’ll also note that the local geography has been modified so that man-made creeks and streams from the river are running into the farmland.
This doesn’t have to be too in-depth, just talk about the surrounding area, what your players will see from the town and what they’ll see as they approach or leave it. You may even find photos that help you get a solid description that you can hand out to your players!
"Regardless of the state of Kessit’s buildings, the area around the town is stunning. This could be one of the most beautiful places on the continent. Grelaket Range borders the north only a thirty or so kilometers away, the sun sets over Lake Sani to the west each evening, and rolling hills dotted with trees greet anyone who steps out of Kessit on the mainland. Trenches have been dug on the mainland to direct the waters of Ikiz into the irrigation systems that have been created for efficient farming, creating grasslands that are perpetually damp with dew, resulting in shimmering fields of green."
The Geography of Kessit
Resources
Earlier in this course, we wrote a single line about the state of the settlement’s economy. Now, we’re going to talk a bit more about how that economy works. What resources are provided by the settlement and which ones are needed from others?
There are a few ways to break this down. You can just write out a list or create a table, or you can write a paragraph or two about the state of the economy for this location. For Kessit, I think I can summarize the economic state, resource requirements, and resource production in a couple of paragraphs.
Kessit exports grain and vegetables to many of the nearby towns. It has the potential to become a mining town in the future, given the hills nearby. Logging is another possible industry that could be pursued, though this to a lesser degree as the trees aren’t quite as numerous here as they are in other, closer areas. Most of the funding from Kessit, though, comes from fees that are paid by traders who come through the harbor to purchase or sell goods.
Kessit has much of what it needs to survive--they can acquire their own granite and wood for buildings as needed. Most of the imported goods are actually luxury items that are purchased by the wealthy individuals who reside on the ait. Ivory, marble, precious metals, the like. For essentials, they may import coal, linens, salt, medicinal plants, and some plants that they can’t grow in this region but that are valuable, such as reeds for rope.
"Kessit has much of what it needs to survive--they can acquire their own granite and wood for buildings as needed and they have wheat fields that seem endless. Most of the imported goods are actually luxury items that are purchased by the wealthy individuals who reside on the ait. Ivory, marble, precious metals, the like. For essentials, they may import coal, linens, salt, medicinal plants, and some plants that they can’t grow in this region but that are valuable, such as reeds for rope."
The Resources of Kessit
Points of Interest
Okay, we’re almost done. I know this is a long one! This next part should be quick and easy because we aren’t doing a real dive into this until a much later episode. After the resources section, you’ll see a “Points of Interest” section. This is where you’ll add the high-level details of your shops and key locations within your village, town, or city.
We aren’t going to fill out all of the information here, but we do want to list some of the essentials at this stage. That means Type and Summary. That’s it. You don’t even have to name them, you just need to specify what they are and give a quick, single-sentence summary. You can add details as you like, but we won’t be doing that here in this walkthrough, that’s something I have planned for later.
So, let’s go ahead and copy the “Point Name” section a few times so that we can get started. Each town should have most or all of these features: food, healing, happiness (or an attempt at it), religion, sanitation, defense, and knowledge. There are also many other features that should appear, but these are ones that I think that many of them should have and are essential for the region to have the potential for prosperity. In the Points of Interest section, you should add one source of each of these things. The “Type” is whether it’s a building, landmark, district, etc. The Summary, then, is just a quick sentence about what it is and what it does for the populace. If it has a name (a tavern, for example, would almost certainly have a name), you can enter that now, but I’m not going to bother naming every shop here.
I’m going to be adding the bridge, farming district, harbor, and ait as points of interest because these are landmarks that make Kessit what it is. By the end, I have a long list of buildings and locations that I can flesh out in a future stage of this area’s development. I’ve got a tavern, apothecary, two chapels for a couple of the deities in my world, a few wells and a crude sewer system, some guard posts, and a school that’s available for those who can afford it over on the ait. It’s a list that’s going to be pretty exciting to flesh out in the future!
Conclusion
Holy crap that was a lot more content than I had originally thought I'd be putting in this single part of this series! We added details to our chosen region and then we fleshed out our first settlement! Our settlement is rich with detail, now, and we should already have a solid understanding of what sort of conflict we could use to create a compelling first arc! That’s good because the first arc is what we’re going to be writing in the next post in this series.
I hope you took something away from this session and are now eager for what’s coming up next. This is just one of many settlements that you can work on. If you’re already thinking of ideas for other settlements in this region, go ahead and get started on those! I’m just sticking to Kessit for now, but will certainly need to add details for the other places, in the future.
If you did enjoy this article or if you learned something from it, please show your support, I’d really appreciate it! You can share this post, subscribe to me on YouTube, leave a comment about the settlement and region you developed, or however else you want to offer your support. You can also give me a follow on social media (links will be down below). Instagram is where I'm most active! The resource I mentioned in this post is also linked below.
Again, I greatly appreciate the time you took to check this out. I can’t wait to get started on writing this first arc with you! Until then... bye!
You can download the Settlement Information Form using this link!