Villages Vs Dungeons: When and How to Use Both

How to Be a Better DM: Dungeon Master Tips for the DM Newbie, the Hobbyist and the Forever DM

Tanner Weyland (00:04.783)

Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Say hi, Justin. Hi, Justin. We are here today to talk about a fun little topic, basically, Dungeons and Villages, when and how to use either. So I mean, this topic, I've always find it interesting, like the composition of a campaign, you know?

Justin (00:13.631)

Hi Justin.

Tanner Weyland (00:33.535)

If you treat it like a like a sandwich, it's like, okay, what you know, it's a nice BLT. Do you put the tomatoes on first? Do you put you know, are you a maniac and you just put a bunch of bacon and just like a leaf of lettuce? You know, what do you do? And how do you kind of balance it? That's kind of what a lot of DMS have to do when it comes to being like, Hey, I want a really cool dungeon. But I also want to have some of the more role playing heavy

Villages and kind of switch it up. Have you ever thought about this kind of balance that you have Justin?

Justin (01:09.986)

I haven't necessarily thought of the balance, but I certainly have fallen into the blunders that we're going to talk about with each of these. And when you do, it's pretty annoying because you kind of kick yourself and be like, dang, that dungeon could have been so fun or that village could have been so fun. I will say, I definitely think one might be a little bit easier because, well, we'll get

I'll reveal all as we talk.

Tanner Weyland (01:42.847)

Exactly. So for the purpose of this discussion, just to give a little roadmap, we'll kind of dive into dungeons and villages or cities, you know, we're saying villages, but we mean any kind of settlement where it's going to be, you know, more NPC centric built. So that's kind of what we're thinking about when we think of village. And it could be any size could be a little, you know, three shacks by the side of the road, or it could be an entire city.

Surrounded by huge walls with giant palaces within it, right? And it just kind of the that's we're bundling that as one experience done on the other side dungeons now It's not always a dungeon per se but it's kind of like a curated Experience where you know, the adventuring party is going into one specific place and exploring, you know

And it's not somewhere they're just traveling through. It's like, no, it's, it's a specific kind of, uh, self-enclosed experience. Uh, so kind of getting into it, let's, let's talk about dungeons and what kind of makes a dungeon special.

Justin (02:50.622)

Yeah. And one other thing I'd like to also add, just sort of a caveat. These are traditional dungeons and villages. You could theoretically take whatever we're talking about, like the aspects, and apply them to the other one, right? For example, by nature, dungeons will be, or seem more railroad-y, right?

Justin (03:19.85)

Choices have been made and now choices are restricted, right? Like once Aragorn follows the path of the dead and he goes into the mountain, the ghosts know he's there, right? He can't just, well, he could just turn around and walk out, but those are his only two choices. Proceed, stay where he is. I guess three choices or go backward. But, but theoretically you could make a village more railroad-y, but we're going to talk in general terms. So that's really the first.

point of a dungeon and kind of what it is once you're in it, it's either stay where you are, which is kind of not really a choice, go forward or go back.

Tanner Weyland (03:58.467)

Exactly and once you're at the dungeon you can kind of expect You know, I think it's gonna be reskinned and you're going to as a DM, you know We talked about this before you want to give a variety of experiences, you know, don't have every combat be the same Have interesting mechanics and include traps here and there and make sure they're not all the same either But that's kind of what you're expecting in the dungeon. You're gonna expect a lot of combats with various creatures

A lot of traps that or just you know obstacles and skill checks that the party is gonna have to deal with and of course loot. I think that that's Another big difference between villages and dungeons is a dungeon So long as you beat the enemy or the challenge or whatever it is The treasure is just sitting there. You don't have to barter. You don't have to pay anything you paid with your time And and your characters, you know

bodies essentially, right? And I think that's kind of you, that's what you expect. And yeah, it might be within a druids ancient enclave or something or it could be in a crypt, you know far below the city, you know, or whatever it is. The skin is going to look different and the types of monsters is going to be specific to the environment, but it's still kind of those elements, you know.

Justin (05:22.494)

Absolutely. Kind of to that point, you know, a traditional way of making dungeons is coming up with either the map first or kind of the end goal first, right? So if they're going into this crypt to destroy a lich, you know, you know that they're going to fight the lich at some point, unless they leave the crypt, right? That's just how it is. And then you sort of fill everything in

challenges to make it more difficult and things like that. So with all that said, compared to a village, a dungeon is a lot more obvious in terms of goals, right? People don't necessarily go into a dungeon and then halfway through be like, wait, like when we get to the end, what are we gonna do? It's like, no, we're gonna kill the baddie and take the loot, right? Like that's the dungeons part of Dungeons and Dragons.

Tanner Weyland (06:19.511)

Exactly. And so I find that dungeons are, they're nice in one way and they're difficult in another. First, they're really nice in the way that it's simple. You know, the players, like I was running a campaign and I had a dungeon.

You know, this was one of those campaigns that kind of sputtered out pretty early on because school happened and all this other stuff, right? But we had gone through it opened up with essentially a dungeon crawl, you know, kind of like a smaller to medium sized one took a few sessions and And then it was like a couple villages in a row and they the players like afterwards. They were like, Oh, I really like that initial dungeon.

And I think that the reason why is because like, Hey, when you're just opening up to adventure, uh, especially if your party isn't amazing at role play, you don't scratch that. Even if they are amazing at role play role playing, I think that you have, there's a lot of difficulty in launching right into role playing. If you haven't had kind of those more like grindy dungeons that you have to go through, right? You kind of need experiences.

in order to really enjoy a village. And I think dungeons are a perfect place for that.

Justin (07:40.778)

I couldn't agree more and I actually think based on what you said, it sparked kind of this thought in my mind that I often talk about galvanizing experiences at the beginning of campaigns or with one shots that force the party to be a party, right? And those galvanizing experiences can be, you know, shared trauma or they could literally be we've all been hired to do the same thing. And

Tanner Weyland (08:08.98)

Yeah.

Justin (08:10.134)

To your point, Tanner, I think doing dungeons at the beginning of a campaign is very important because it does allow the party to sort of form those bonds. And even thinking, you can do dungeons in sort of a very non-dungeony way. So the example I'm thinking of is the Erois campaign of high rollers. They're a group out of the UK, and I've been listening to them

lately and spoiler alert if you haven't listened to it but their campaign starts with session one they're on an airship and they're being attacked right and basically chapter one of this campaign the airship crashes in the lowlands which is a wild and inhospitable place right and there's like five or six survivors fibers including the party

Actually, there might be more because I think there were NPCs. But in a larger sense, that is a dungeon because their options are we have to find civilization or we're going to starve, be attacked by wild elves, things like that, right? And I might be kind of expanding the definition a little bit, but you can do things like that.

And I do think that starting campaigns with a dungeon is a very good idea. Because again, it does give everyone that clear reason of why are we traveling together? Why are we cooperating? Because everyone always likes to pick those characters that are mysterious and don't trust anyone, you know.

Tanner Weyland (09:53.531)

Yeah. And, and, you know, I think for all the strengths of a dungeon, because like you mentioned, it's, it's right in the name. As much as people love dragons, dungeons comes first. Uh, and, but I think that the issue is that sometimes they can be fatiguing, especially for a DM, but also for players, right? Where it's like, if, if it's big enough, well, I mean, caveat, if your players come in being like, Hey, I want to do a huge dungeon, you know.

Uh, just like multi-level and that's basically the entire campaign's one big dungeon that that's, that's the exception. If you're just including a dungeon as part of the campaign, if you do too long of a dungeon, then it's just, it's a lot of combats. It's a lot of the party being essentially on edge the entire time, right. Being like, Oh, you know, stealth into the next room for like 10 sessions in a row. You know,

And it just becomes so fatiguing. And so it's like, Hey, you know, pick your battles, uh, specifically by, you know, making it so that not every dungeon is super long, uh, occasionally, I think it's totally worth it to do a longer dungeon, especially if you've got really big consequences and if you build it up, then the players are like, Oh, okay. Prepare well. Cause you know, there's no coming back or not for a while, at least then, you know, a longer campaign can be fine.

It'll still be fatiguing, but it's kind of like the hard days work type of fatigue. Otherwise you don't want to do that consistently in my opinion.

Justin (11:24.138)

Yeah. I would actually add two examples of my current campaign. Um, so I had my group in the underdark and my thought process was, well, in the underdark, you don't really, you guys don't know where you're going. So you're, you're literally wandering around. Uh, and I was making the map as I went, basically rolling on random tables to see what rooms were, were next. And they weren't keeping a map, right?

And suffice it to say it went on far too long. And I did that because I was like, yeah, I want them to feel the frustration of being in the underdark, right? Being lost. But I think it failed because you don't want your players to feel that you want the characters to feel that. So exactly right, Tanner. You don't want to do too big of a dungeon, but you said something very important. If you prepare them for the scope of it and the scale.

I think that's the secret sauce.

Tanner Weyland (12:26.203)

Exactly, you know, because any type of here's the great thing. We talk about Dungeons and Dragons being about storytelling and it's absolutely right and stories come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but as a general rule, you know, if you're not really building a dungeon up, then maybe make it small to medium length, you know, and then for longer ones, you want to give that kind of a gravitas to it beforehand.

Um, but, but enough about dungeons, let's talk about villages and cities. Um, I think it's no surprise that first and foremost, they're just much more role playing focused, right? You don't go into a dungeon expecting to talk with every mimic who's pretending to be a chest, right? You go into a dungeon to just, you know, hack and slash and find stuff. Villages. It's like, no, that's, that's the key difference is like people. NPCs and you're going to be talking a lot.

and how you kind of utilize those role-playing opportunities can be the difference between a very boring city or village and a very exciting one, you know?

Justin (13:33.482)

Yeah, absolutely. Kind of what I was saying before, you know, Aragorn goes into the path of the dead. He's in the dungeon per se. It's not exactly the same thing, but his choices are stay put, move forward or go backwards in a, in a city, a village, a settlement. Your decisions are, uh, go forward, stay put, go backward, go right, go left, go up, go down, go inside, go outside that, you know, there's a lot more choices. And.

To this point, as I said with a dungeon, the game mechanics were a lot more obvious with a dungeon, right? There are traps that cause things. In a settlement, you have more choice, right? And because of that, you're...

The game mechanics aren't as obvious. You might gain favor in the eyes of a baron because you did something for them, which isn't a direct game mechanic, but it's something that your dungeon master or you might be factoring in because you slaughtered this orc that was holding this person hostage or something like that.

It's sort of a subtle game mechanic that's not so obvious, but it still has impact. That's another aspect of villages and cities that is very different than traditional dungeons.

Tanner Weyland (15:04.323)

Exactly. And I think, I think if you look at it the right way, then Villages provides you a lot more creativity, especially where, you know, like you were saying, the mechanics aren't obvious. So make your own mechanics, and specifically, make it in a way that provides both direction and development for characters. Because I think that's where Villages really shine, where it's like

if you look at a dungeon in terms of like, oh, that's a place where they get kind of galvanized together as a party, the place where they grow as individuals is in a city, you know, in a village, that's where the characters can be like, hey, I'm gonna go pray at the nearest, you know, temple of the God that they worship, right? Or they're going to go look for a specific type of equipment that they're looking for. Or maybe they're, they're like, hey, I want to go find

you know, the best pie in the city or whatever it is, right? The point is, is that in a city, if you encourage it, players can really get connected with their characters. They can get really invested in their characters, uh, personal, you know, goals and aspirations and growth. And that's, you know, that's just such a great, uh, part of it. And in terms of the mechanics being more fluid, uh, you know, I think that in a city and once again, just as a.

caveat here, cities also should be, you know, you shouldn't keep a player in a city too long, you know, um, kind of same as a dungeon, uh, they should go out and then come back kind of thing. But with that in mind, uh, you should be willing to kind of play around with some interesting mechanics, like, Hey, maybe your players want to start up a food cart or a business, or they want to, you know, go and study at the local library and like get something out of it.

Justin (16:34.312)

Heh.

Tanner Weyland (16:58.639)

Villages, you know, if you're creative, they can be so much more than just a place where they get a couple side quests from some needy passerbys and also buy equipment from the local store, right? They can be something where you actually do real things that we do in life, right? But for a party of players, right?

Justin (17:20.21)

Absolutely. And I think in a city, it is the time to really pay attention to those moments where your players express sort of an interest of their character that might seem unorthodox or kind of like a waste of time. Go full in on that, right? If someone's like, you know, like my character likes animals, so maybe they would want to go see a zoo. Spend time making some pretty cool encounters at the zoo.

where they could actually make some progress in their character's life. Like they could maybe find an animal companion or a secret treasure or something, like treat their simple interests as important because then they'll share them more often and they'll kind of go down those rabbit holes. And also kind of going back to what you were saying about your own game mechanics. I think one of those that

we're going to talk about on a future episode is character reputation. And, uh, sorry, my computer just, did I cut out there? Okay. Yeah. My computer just was like, Nope, I'm going to sleep. Anyways, um, character reputation can be a very powerful mechanic, especially in a city because there's people with whom you can gain reputation or lose it. Right.

Tanner Weyland (18:30.895)

You're good.

Tanner Weyland (18:49.707)

Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, aside from developing personal character arcs, developing relationships with NPCs, that can't be understated, right? Because it's like, hey, it character reputation is important on the city wide level. And I think that's really fun. But also like with individual characters, you know, in video games, they do it really well, where they're like, Oh,

You kind of have to reach a certain level of like favorability with an NPC. And then that unlocks different opportunities or, or whatever, you know. And I think that we, as DMs, when there's a city, I feel like it's actually worthwhile to kind of create, you know, a little, you know, a little, uh, level. Uh, for some, at least for some of the major NPCs, right. That they're going to be interacting with on a regular basis and kind of make it so that they are.

not only encouraged to develop themselves, but also develop relationships with NPCs by doing like side quests and stuff. And I think side quests is, you know, something that you should really emphasize in general in a bigger city. Because it's like, you know, with a main quest, you kind of think of it as continuously going forward and moving on to the next place and the next place after that.

in a city you don't especially if it's bigger, you don't want to go there, visit once, and then just never use it again. You know, especially if the players haven't had the time to really wring it of all its good, you know, opportunities. And so it's nice in a city to, like you were saying, it's like, hey, make essentially a side outing, or a side quest of going to the zoo, or oh, hey, my uncle's farm, I haven't heard from him in a while.

Could you help me? You know, and you just really, it's a chance for you to play around with different, you know, opportunities and kind of quest lines that aren't just the main big earth shattering quest, you know?

Justin (20:56.99)

Absolutely. Thinking about this and thinking about some of the challenges that you will probably encounter when running cities in your game. I'm just thinking about some of the challenges I've had in the first one is it's really easy for the one player who usually...