Ep 61 - Bright Lights, Big City (Playing In City Settings)

Do your players (or yourself as a player) behave differently when your PCs enter a city, village, or township? Today we're discussing some of the unique challenges of playing in a city setting.

We go in-depth on how specific game times associated with city play differ from a traditional gaming model which heavily incorporates the TTRPG pillar of exploration. We run down several methods for keeping the action moving, avoiding boredom, and maintaining canon.

We also cover the idea of player pragmatism, and the unique phenomenon of behavioral shifts caused by a change of locale.

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Show Breakdown:

• 0:00: Intro
• 0:30: TTRPG News
• 08:35: How some adventure types lend themselves to city settings.
• 09:30: Adapting the TTRPG pillar of exploration for intuitive city play.
• 11:50: Making a locale robust without getting stuck in the trap of endless prep.
• 20:15: Lore is great for reinforcing a city's character.
• 22:43: Maintaining canon.
• 26:32: Cities provide much more immediate consequence for questionable behavior.
• 31:58: How to avoid alienating certain player types while in different locales.
• 36:48: Pragmatism, character integrity, and how locale can influence the behavioral shifts of players.
• 44:07: Ways to regain tone after out-of-character conversations short circuit encounters.
• 49:44: Avoiding getting into a boring string of fetch quests.
• 54:33: Outro