As part of our RPG Cauldron Secret Santicorn 2025, I am delivering to @SullyTames a response blog
The town/settlement as an adventure site in itself. What if you never had to leave the tavern to go on an adventure?
This was fun!
If you have any thoughts or ideas on how to run an adventure within a single town or even a single building, please do share! Or perhaps a favorite settlement adventure?
Really enjoying your post, especially the workbook-style presentation with lots of lists. Inspiring!
I ran a couple of adventures in MERP‘s Tharbad, a long time ago, so that might be a favourite, along with the city of London in the storygame The Between.
What I definitely need for a city based game is a map, and characteristics of certain quarters or areas. Having each individual house described, as in Midkemia‘s Carse, however, didn‘t work for me as GM, as it leaves too little room for improvisation.
Great writeup! Love the reference list for adventures and books that influenced this piece.
I think that in principle, while not conducive to a crawl in the same way a dungeon is, villages and towns can be equally worth exploring as sites for adventure. Of course it’s just a different kind of adventure. I think back on the really short adventure site The Ladder Inn by Lazy Litch as a great example of this. My players spent a whole session in the tavern, but they were actively engaging with the content there. In fact, the tavern was more interesting than the dungeon because of how much was going on in there on a social level. Spells were used and shenanigans ensued as much as they would in any dungeon, but to further different objectives.
Towns and settlement can and should feel dynamic the same way a dungeon is. The way Lazy Litch did it was to plan out a timeline, but you could also incorporate random events that can spice things up.
I think the most interesting thing about town adventures by and large is that for the most part violence is actively discouraged in a way that it kind of isn’t in a dungeon. Danger can be very real and present, but violence will almost definitely make the problem worse.
Thanks! Coming to blog writing after academic research article writing I can’t help but want to address the background and relevant works. I think our blogs could benefit from more interlinking with collections and ideally surveys (or annotated collections). I suspect I will be revisiting this list myself in the future!
Ohh, iirc, MERP was in Stu Horvaths’ book. I’ll give this a look
And I forgot about The Between! I remember it being discussed in the NSR discord and I was looking into it for inspiration. That is a good one for sure.
I agree. I think a map is essential, either premade or generated. If premade, then they can do what they did back in the day leaving in some spaces for filling in by the game master or group. This is what some of those original city settings did. That way it can allow making it your own along with covering some basics. I think striking this balance appropriately can be difficult though, to have something premade and empty. Especially when considering if certain buildings need made for a set of functions.
I’ll have to give Lazy Litch’s Ladder Inn a try! Thanks for sharing and for the request!
I agree that the towns should feel dynamic if not even more dynamic given a town is more alive than some ruins, tho depends on the ruins or dungeon ofc. I think purposefully dynamic settings that react to the presence and actions of the players are good design in general. 
Nonviolent solutions tend to be far more complex in my experience and thus more interesting as puzzles to solve. Sometimes I would play a pacifist in typical dungeon delving or heroic fantasy games to explore that puzzle where it was originally not intended.
I agree the societal pressures for nonviolent solutions make very interesting puzzles, which I thoroughly enjoy!
I think something worth doing for me is making a settlement adventure using my guidelines here to provide a more concrete generative approach.