The Book of Sandboxes II

I’ve talked before about adapting the Engine of the Ages from The Book of Ages into a collaborative tool for building sandboxes – but my favourite sandbox is the weird fantasy city. So, let’s talk about collaboratively building weird fantasy settlements.

To recap the basics of the Engine of the Ages (for the full version, get thee to the Book of Ages), each player takes a faction, which is usually connected to their player character but doesn’t have to be, and the GM gets 3-4 other factions that’ll be important in the campaign. Then, each player gets assigned a number of landmarks connected to their faction, and we go around the table building up our setting as we go, with the aid of carefully phrased leading questions to tease out creative responses.

Sketch the Outline

When doing this for a city, the first step is to pick the city – is it one of the seven great cities of the canon-for-whatever-values-of-canon-apply-here of the Dragon Empire, or a lesser town, or something of your own creation? Quickly sketch the physical outline of the city – is it surrounded by walls? Centred on a harbour? Bisected by a river? In the caldera of an inactive volcano? Carried on the back of a Koru Behemoth?

Sketch the Main Streets

Draw in any main streets that are implied by the outline. Is there a road going through the town? A bridge? A big city might have several gates with the streets meeting in the centre; a town built in the skull of a dragon might have one entrance leading in from the dragon’s gaping maw.

Name these streets.

Pick the Factions

Who’s important in the city? Who’s important in the campaign? The players, of course, are free to choose who they want to represent, but it’s generally best if they take some connection to their character’s class/folk/backgrounds. The GM should consider taking some of the more mundane factions like:

• The city’s government
• The city watch
• Whatever craft/industry/merchant guild is especially significant to the city

In a city-based campaign, pick factions that everyone knows about – they don’t necessarily need to be public, but well known enough to spawn rumours or be part of common knowledge (everyone knows the thieves’ guild meets down by the docks).

Assign Landmarks

Each faction gets 2-3 landmarks (fewer than the wider sandbox). The GM, juggling multiple factions, splits their landmark quota among their factions as they wish. For each landmark, roll a d6 to determine what it’s going to be. (The Meeting Place, Flashpoint and Entanglement all involve two factions – don’t pick the second faction yet).

1. Meeting Place
2. Flashpoint
3. Entanglement
4. Asset
5. Stronghold
6. Ruin

A Meeting Place is where people from the player’s faction and another faction regularly intermingle in a friendly way. Examples might be bridges, markets, taverns.

A Flashpoint is a place disputed between two factions, or something that regularly causes strife between them.

An Entanglement is a troublesome connection between two factions – a shared asset, a joint project, a shared problem. Basically, if a Meeting Place is a positive relationship between the factions, and a Flashpoint is the embodiment of a negative relationship, an Entanglement is the definition of a complicated one. A city council divided between two factions, a tower that the dwarves are building for the wizard’s guild (and it’s behind scheduled), the elven temple that’s also a front for smugglers…

An Asset is a place of value or importance to the faction; something that others might covet, or that would severely impact the faction if it was destroyed.

A Stronghold, obviously, is a place where the faction is most secure and at its most influential.

A Monument is, well, a monument to the faction. It doesn’t have to be a statue or other formal monument – it could be a ruin, or a sacred spot, or a tavern that’s traditionally associated with the faction. It’s a place of symbolic importance or meaning to the faction.

(Note that unlike the regular Engine of the Ages, there’s more emphasis on connections between factions – a big draw of an urban setting is having different factions clashing and overlapping and sparking off each other.)

Set Down Landmarks

Go around the table. In turn, each player picks one of their assigned landmarks and draws it on the shared map. If the landmark’s a Meeting Place, Flashpoint or Entanglement, pick one of the other factions and collaboratively work out what it is (giving extra weight to the choices of the active player).

Define The Landmark

The GM (and anyone else who wants to chip in) asks the player a few questions to help flesh out the landmark and describe the city. Possible questions:

• What does the landmark look like?
• What custom or belief is associated with it?
• There’s a strange minor magical effect (or a superstition) associated with the landmark – what is it?
• Who’s the custodian or other figure most associated with the landmark?
• What’s an untrue rumour about the landmark?

Draw Thoroughfares

Draw a street connecting that landmark either to another existing street, or another landmark. Name that new street. The goal isn’t to thoroughly map the whole settlement, but to get a first-draft map that can be refined later on.

If appropriate, connections don’t have to be streets – they might be tunnels, canals, bridges, walkways, alleyways, or even weirder routes.

For Example

Building on the previous example, we’ve got Alice (Dwarves), Bob (Fate Ghosts – the shades of people from Ages that never came to pass) and Cedric (Briar Elves). The GM’s playing the Crusade, the Burghers of Glitterhaegen, and servants of the High Druid. They’re going to be fleshing out the town of Thornmarket, where the merchants of Glitterhaegen trade (carefully) with the dangerous Briar Elves.

Sketch the Outline & Main Streets

The GM sketches out the village in the Briarwood – it’s centred on a crossroads where three paths meet. The Elf-Path, the Glitterhaegen Road, and the Dwarf Road.

Assign Landmarks

Alice	Dwarves	Ruin, Meeting Place
Bob	Fate Ghosts	Asset, Asset
Cedric	Briar Elves	Meeting Place, Asset
GM	Crusade, Glitterhaegen, High Druid	Ruin,  Asset, Entanglement

Immediately, we see some interesting possibilities. The Fate Ghosts – a faction that previously had no real connection to the Thorn Market – have two Assets here. What’s so valuable to them here? And what’s that dwarven ruin? Let’s find out…

Set Down Landmarks, Round 1

Alice decides that the Thornmarket’s sheltered by an ancient dwarven Ruin, a castle that was captured by the Briar Elves long long ago. It’s called Greenstone now; prompted by the GM, she describes how there’s a sect of dwarves with scythes who labour to keep the last few towers of Greenstone from being engulfed by the wood.

She connects Greenstone to the Dwarf Road.

Bob puts down the first Asset of the Fate Ghost. “It’s the Meat Tree” he says, a magic tree where the Fate Ghosts can grow new bodies like meaty fruit.

Everyone stares at Bob for a moment.

Then the GM suggests it was originally a hanging tree, and some twist of magic means the Fate Ghosts were able to possess the bodies of the condemned. Bob really likes the meat fruit visual though, so the GM agrees that it’s now sprouting bodies even though it’s no longer used for executions.

Cedric puts down his Meeting Place – Thornmarket’s supposed to be where the Briar Elves trade with the merchants of Glitterhaegen, so he puts the market itself in the courtyard of Greenstone. “Briar Elves” says the GM, “are supposed to be absolutely terrifying villains according to Bestiary II, so what exactly gets bought and sold here?”

Cedric thinks for a bit, and suggests that the Thornmarket’s all about offerings. The merchants from Glitterhaegen have never even seen a Briar Elf – they leave things in the market, and the elves take them. Sometimes, the elves leave things in return – twisted magic items, weird creatures, maybe people who were kidnapped long long ago. If the elves leave nothing in return, that’s bad – it means the Briarwood doesn’t think the offerings are enough, and the thorns will take what it’s owed…

Next, the GM puts down one of his landmarks – the Entanglement between the Briar Elves and the merchants of Glitterhaegen.  It’s the Tollhouse, a hall where the potential offerings to the Briar Elves are gathered and stored before being presented in the market.

Round 2

Round two starts with the GM again – the Crusade’s Asset, a band of mercenaries called the Redguard. They’ve traditionally guarded caravans travelling up the Glitterhaegen Road, but lately they’ve become part of the Crusade – and suspect the Briar Elves of being in league with demons. Their fortress is a lodge called the Red House.

Cedric puts down the Asset of the Briar Elves – the House of the Speaker, a cryptic entity that communicates the desires of the elves. The other players, quite reasonably, ask what the Speaker looks like, and Cedric says it’s different for everyone who enters the house.

Bob’s got a second Fate Ghost Asset. A small village needs an inn, so he creates the Inn of the Spirits. Here, disembodied and phantasmal Fate Ghosts on their way to a rebirth at the Meat Tree; the inn caters to both the living and the not-exactly-dead.

Alice’s last location is a Dwarven Meeting Place – and she picks the GM’s High Druid faction as the faction her dwarves meet with. It’s an ancient well, once part of Greenstone, that’s become a place of pilgrimage for the druids. Cedric suggests that it’s a precursor of the Thornmarket – the druids of old used to make offerings to the Briar Elves by throwing treasures into the well, until the wood wasn’t satisfied and the Briar Elves attacked. Alice adds that the dwarves forged jewels and other treasures for the druids as offerings, and when the druids were driven out of the Briarwood, the dwarves established Greenstone Fortress in the hopes of recovering those squandered treasures! There’s a dungeon at the bottom of the well that’s said to be full of dwarven jewellery and Briar Elf traps!

The GM’s last location is a High Druid Ruin – which they agree to merge with the Holy Well concept. The village needs a few more ordinary houses, so the GM creates the Westwall Cottages, a few dwellings built on the site of the ancient druidic monastery.

Summing Up

It’s not quite the spooky goblin market that was originally intended, but this tribute-in-exchange-for-weird-gifts gimmick works just as well – and this version of Thornmarket has a lovely “settlement on the edge of catastrophe” vibe. Unstable settings are really interesting in play…