Not sure how detailed to be when building a world.

[DirtyRabbit813]

This is my first time being the DM for a group of friends. I started by building a world for all this to take place in. I'm doing this in 3.5. I quickly realized that this is a very time consuming process. I don't know how detailed the world should be. I made a basic map of the realm which consisted of a map of the land and lines separating territories and major geographic features like rivers and mountains. Thrn for this particular quest it takes place in a large town. In the 3.5 DM guide they did a pretty good job explaining but, they left me with a few questions. How detailed should the map be. When the Pcs are walking through the streets must they dictate their every turn or is it a broad thing where they'd just declare that they want to go to an inn? Would they roll for that? Do I need specifically marked inns? So far I just did a sketch of the city walls and separated them into districts. I have somewhat of an idea of what it holds. Like a shopping district has shops for example. Even if I were to do it this way I don't lnow how they woulf travel. How do they decalare movements and are there any rolls necessary?

[RegalKain]

On phone so sorry for typos.

As someone who has extremely inquisitive players. I will say this. If you make a map (even for a one off battle) your players will expect that to be the same next time in the area. You can draw out an entire city but honestly I'd give them a rough town map and then fill it in as they explore. For what it's worth in 3.5 it's a Knowledge (Local) check to find this gs like an inn etc. How detailed you want them to be with movements is based on how detailed traps and things are going to be.

Whenever you introduce someone make a note of it in a notepad for that town. Like Frank the blacksmith. Some players will do this, it helps you to make the world feel more alive in addition plot hooks. If the party goes to Old Frank to chat Everytime they are in town and sell stuff. And this time he's in tears and shaking there's a rapport built up. The players will take greater notice if it's not just Town Guard B12 spouting a quest line.

As for the rest of the world a rough outline is fine Get the governments figured out, and important political people, everything else fill in as your party finds it. This also let's you change large chunks when your party dumps a box of monkies duel-wielding wrenches in your plans.

[SilverStud]

Well, this is very largely down to how each different DM prefers to do things. I'll tell you how I like to do things.

I always think about it from the story end first. What purpose does this city or town or dungeon or whatever serve in the greater narrative. Let's talk about the beginning of your adventure (proper): the hub town.

Spoiler

Show

Disclaimer: I am of the opinion that you should only build and map out what you think will become relevant. I do full Theatre of the Mind^TM until combat starts, then I use nice maps and things. I think your general maps are a very good idea for organizing your thoughts and giving to players that purchase a map. If you make a super detailed map with hyper-accurate measurements, you are probably wasting your time. Knowing where things are in relation to one another is enough, until battle.

The hub town is very important, since this is the place that the party will likely return to after each excursion. So here is where you should put the most effort. Your hub town will need several things, but two are an absolute must: a place to stay, and adventure hooks.

A place to stay can be an inn, the home of a PC, the home of a patron, etc. etc. Adventure hooks are usually events that happen around the PCs to grab their interest and make them follow it through.

Everything else that you put in your town should depend on your story. Who do you intend to give them their quest? Put that guy in, along with where he lives, who he works for/employs, his family, and some backstory. Got any sidequests? Add the questgivers for those too, but don't go quite as all out on their details as the main quest guy. Is there a conflict dividing the city? Detail what that looks like on the "warfront" of the conflict. For instance, if the poor are rioting along the edge of the Rich District, go into detail about what is happening. Not so much detail is needed when fully on one side or the other. Hope that makes sense.

tl;dr
If it is relevant to the story, detail it. If not, generalize. If the players take interest in a generality, make something up. All of my funnest moments in D&D have come when I improvised.

[sktarq]

Two major things come from a basis of needs

First figure out what kind of game you want to run. Lots of dungeon delving? Mercenary outdoor work? High magic? Low magic? Etc. Then figure out where that kind of work will come from. If you want dungeon delving you need to know who built the dungeons, who buys the loot, etc. Figuring this kind of thing out not only gives you a general shape of the world but will also inform you of things you may need later in the game that can be awkward to retcon in. It will also help show you where to focus your development of the world. If a lot of the time the PC's are going to be on the road from hubtown to spoke towns then building the road network, bridges that can be blocked, brigand areas, and landscape types can be very worthwhile but if it just "X days later you arrive at spoketown Y" then that would be effort wasted.

Once you have figured out what kind of NPC/npc groups you need to run the kind of game you want-ask what those NPC's need. You want an outlying mining town? They need food, water, leadership, protection, smelting fuel, market goods, defense, and transport of import and exports. Figuring out these will help you build out your world faster, give you ideas for plot hooks/interesting NPC's, and even as a sketch will give you a solid foundation to build off of if your players make an unexpected turn and go places you never built for (which is the weakness of building lighter)

[DoomHat]

I recommend taking a moment to think about how cities in computer RPGs are layed out.

Generally there will be an over-map that sums up the districts and their approximate relation to each other. From there the players can zoom into a given district and find only as much detail as is needed to interact with it.

For example, maybe the residential district is one of the largest locations in the city geographically, but your zoomed in version might be the smallest and least detailed if the players won't have much to do there.

Come to think of it, you could make a perfectly functional "map" of your city that consists only of a nested list of "places/people of note".

The only reason to make a highly precise map of any given area within the town is if a fight or other such micromanaged encounter is likely to happen there.

[DirtyRabbit813]

Oh okay thank you. That clears it up.

[Vlos]

Just try to think ahead of times where things are?
- A few taverns - only need to detail one. Then when they select a tavern used the detailed one, then after you can do another tavern. No need to ever do all five as they likely won't visit all.

A supply store?
Docks?
Guard/jail house?

Think of games in the past and places you wanted to visit. A larger town will have more, but again don't have to detail more than one out until they visit it.

[Ruslan]

When building a world, city, kingdom, or whatnot, I'm a huge believer in The Rule of One.

The Rule of One simply states: you only need one thing of each.

For example, when building a city, you only need:
- One temple
- One tavern
- One City Watch officer
- One juvenile pickpocket

And so on. People telling you to "create a few taverns" are wrong. Because you only need one. Your PCs decided to go to a tavern? Good, that's the one they will see. They decide to talk to the City Watch? That's the one officer they talk to.

Only when one Tavern/Temple/etc have been visited, do you need to create another. And what if PCs leave the town without visiting any temples? Is your work wasted? Nope. The temple you created for town A will magically teleport to town B. If they do visit a temple, then, yes, you need to make a new one, because it makes no sense for all the temples to be the same.

But until they do, remember, one of each.

[DoomHat]

When building a world, city, kingdom, or whatnot, I'm a huge believer in The Rule of One.

The Rule of One simply states: you only need one thing of each.

For example, when building a city, you only need:
- One temple
- One tavern
- One City Watch officer
- One juvenile pickpocket

And so on. People telling you to "create a few taverns" are wrong. Because you only need one. Your PCs decided to go to a tavern? Good, that's the one they will see. They decide to talk to the City Watch? That's the one officer they talk to.

Only when one Tavern/Temple/etc have been visited, do you need to create another. And what if PCs leave the town without visiting any temples? Is your work wasted? Nope. The temple you created for town A will magically teleport to town B. If they do visit a temple, then, yes, you need to make a new one, because it makes no sense for all the temples to be the same.

But until they do, remember, one of each.

???

[GreatKaiserNui]

The thing is, when you make up stuff as you go you are likely to produce a setting that lacks cohesion.

[Viathon]

Honestly it depends on what kind of DM you are and what kind of players you hve. Do you prefer one-shot campaigns or scenarios you can create then play over-and-over again with different people? do you like a story with depth or just something to entertain over a weekend? Depth requires history, or at least the feel of history, so you'll want a good background for your world if that's the case.
Myself I worked from the top down. I started with the world, then slowly honed in my focus onto a single island just off of the main continent. I had a basic idea about everything else but that one island, Landwreck, I had down to the very detail. I knew what each person was doing, every NPC had a life, a job, a personality. Leave my game for a month and someone's father may have died from a recent pandemic that stuck the island two weeks back. I strive for a living world, a complete world.

But no matter what kind of DM you are remember this golden rule: Consistency! If one of the PCs burned a field of dried grass by accident while battling a lion (<-actually happened on Landwreck), then three games on when they return to the field there should at least be evidence of a fire, and if there isn't make sure you have a good reason why there isn't.

[Yora]

I started outlining my setting by putting together all the things I liked in fantasy about six years ago. And since then the whole process of constant improvement and refinement consisted almost entirely of throwing out things that I realized are not really needed for the original vision and only cluttered things up needlessly.

Many of the most well known campaign settings consists of huge encyclopedias of minor details on culture and specifics about settlements and NPCs. And while these are often interesting to read I almost universally find them to not really be helpful for GMs who want to run a game in them. There are really only two types of information that is useful for GMs in running a game: Finished dungeons that can be used out of the box and outlines for cool and fascinating concepts that GMs can use as a starting point to create their own content. But what we mostly get in published settings is something in the middle where you still have to make the dungeons and settlements yourself but you get a whole lot of information that is of little actual value but has to be followed to keep the newly created content accurately in line with the official setting.
Nobody needs the names, life story, and stats of every ordinary inkeeper and shop owner.

[jqavins]

This is my first time being the DM for a group of friends. I started by building a world for all this to take place in. I'm doing this in 3.5. I quickly realized that this is a very time consuming process. I don't know how detailed the world should be. I made a basic map of the realm which consisted of a map of the land and lines separating territories and major geographic features like rivers and mountains. Thrn for this particular quest it takes place in a large town. In the 3.5 DM guide they did a pretty good job explaining but, they left me with a few questions. How detailed should the map be. When the Pcs are walking through the streets must they dictate their every turn or is it a broad thing where they'd just declare that they want to go to an inn? Would they roll for that? Do I need specifically marked inns? So far I just did a sketch of the city walls and separated them into districts. I have somewhat of an idea of what it holds. Like a shopping district has shops for example. Even if I were to do it this way I don't lnow how they woulf travel. How do they decalare movements and are there any rolls necessary?

As Dr. Spock (not Mr. Spock) said, "Relax, you know more than you think." Even though you've never done it before, you've seen it done and you know what worked well and what didn't. Did a DM ever ask you to detail every turn you made walking around in your home town? If so, I bet it made for a really boring session, as compared to just saying "We go to the Green Dragon" or whatever is the name of your favorite inn. When you come into a new town, do the DMs let you just say "We go to the inn" or do the make you figure out where it is, perhaps by exploring or perhaps by asking someone? How did you feel about each method?

Well, this is very largely down to how each different DM prefers to do things...

and what you're trying to do. You used the word "quest." Did you mean that this world is for a single quest, i.e. a particular story arc of limited (if sometimes rather large) scope, or a world to be used for years? It makes a big, BIG difference.

[DELETIA]
If it is relevant to the story, detail it. If not, generalize. If the players take interest in a generality, make something up. All of my funnest moments in D&D have come when I improvised.

There is a downside to this: it telegraphs what's important and what isn't. Even this isn't always bad, as it can help your players stay on track. But personally I think it helps the world feel more real if not every detail is plot relevant, and I don't mind the players going off on tangents inspired by unintentional red herrings, especially in a long term world. And I should emphasize that I don't mind it whichever side of the DM screen I'm sitting on.

Just try to think ahead of times where things are?
- A few taverns - only need to detail one. Then when they select a tavern used the detailed one, then after you can do another tavern. No need to ever do all five as they likely won't visit all.

A supply store?
Docks?
Guard/jail house?

Think of games in the past and places you wanted to visit. A larger town will have more, but again don't have to detail more than one out until they visit it.

When building a world, city, kingdom, or whatnot, I'm a huge believer in The Rule of One.

The Rule of One simply states: you only need one thing of each.

For example, when building a city, you only need:
- One temple
- One tavern
- One City Watch officer
- One juvenile pickpocket

And so on. People telling you to "create a few taverns" are wrong. Because you only need one. Your PCs decided to go to a tavern? Good, that's the one they will see. They decide to talk to the City Watch? That's the one officer they talk to.

Only when one Tavern/Temple/etc have been visited, do you need to create another. And what if PCs leave the town without visiting any temples? Is your work wasted? Nope. The temple you created for town A will magically teleport to town B. If they do visit a temple, then, yes, you need to make a new one, because it makes no sense for all the temples to be the same.

But until they do, remember, one of each.

I've got to say that, as a player, I have sometimes found this to be limiting. I know it's a lot of work for the DM, and it isn't always worth the effort, but I find there really is value in having a choice of, for example, taverns. There's the seedy one, the upscale one, the one where the good honest working folks go, the one with the brothel in back, and maybe more. Not every town will have every kind, and you don't need to detail more than one of each type. In that way I could agree with Vlos and Ruslan if they had written

- One temple for each of a few gods/religions
- One seedy tavern
- One upscale tavern
- One tavern with a brothel
etc.

I repeat, I know it's a lot of work and I'm not saying you have to, but it's worth considering.

But no matter what kind of DM you are remember this golden rule: Consistency! If one of the PCs burned a field of dried grass by accident while battling a lion (<-actually happened on Landwreck), then three games on when they return to the field there should at least be evidence of a fire, and if there isn't make sure you have a good reason why there isn't.

Hear hear.

[redwizard007]

When building a world, city, kingdom, or whatnot, I'm a huge believer in The Rule of One.

*snip*

Nailed it!

Well, mostly.

*snip*

I've got to say that, as a player, I have sometimes found this to be limiting. I know it's a lot of work for the DM, and it isn't always worth the effort, but I find there really is value in having a choice of, for example, taverns. There's the seedy one, the upscale one, the one where the good honest working folks go, the one with the brothel in back, and maybe more. Not every town will have every kind, and you don't need to detail more than one of each type. In that way I could agree with Vlos and Ruslan if they had written
I repeat, I know it's a lot of work and I'm not saying you have to, but it's worth considering.

Nailed it down even tighter.

A couple statted and mapped locations for major site types can save so much work, and you almost always use them sooner or later. Shoot you can even turn them into ruins with little to no effort. One of my favorite tactics Is to jack old copies of Dragon or Dungeon magazines and make liberal use of my copier. Even more variety since its not coming from my head, and less work for the same reason. With just a little on the fly tweaking, things can run as smoothly as a Weis-Hickman novel.

On a tangential note, I stat block enemies this way too. A single human warrior can be repurposed as a guard, soldier, bandit, bully, etc to save even more time. I always have a handful statted on note cards for just such an occasion. Note cards for orcs, goblins, farmers and the like all get recycled as well.

[sktarq]

The biggest issues with the rule of one.

Detailed oriented, lateral thinking players can break the system with it.

You have a temple. . . and it sits for a couple adventures. . . when you break it out it works . . .next adventure the players remember that it had some offhand comment trait that can be exploited. Or that since the temple had fact X and the local noble also had fact Y it creates a dynamic that the DM hadn't planned for. You pull out a card with a couple details on personality etc . . . which interactions with something you said about the local temple (which was a previous rule of one build) and suddenly . . . .

I've left several DM's breaking down in frustration over the years not because I tried but because I thought they were laying out rails for us that were just the interactions of various rule of one type decisions.

The rule of one works when the party don't stay to interact with the rule of one things very long. Preferably they should move from town to town. It works better for dungeon delvers than investigators. And know you are running a risk.

[Yora]

Doesn't have to be a problem. I see nothing wrong with exploiting weaknesses if the campaign is set up to let the players steer where it is going. Unless you need the setting to remain as it is it's totally fine when the players drastically change things. It's fun for them.

[redwizard007]

The biggest issues with the rule of one.

Detailed oriented, lateral thinking players can break the system with it.

*snip*

The rule of one works when the party don't stay to interact with the rule of one things very long. Preferably they should move from town to town. It works better for dungeon delvers than investigators. And know you are running a risk.

Absolutely true, and I've had a few players that have had me flipping through rule books and preset encounters looking for a way out while puffing furiously on a cigarette cursing their names (Adam and Jason.) Most of the time I run with it. Sometimes it calls for an OOC conversation to resolve. They enjoy seeing me sweat, and I compensate with a couple flavourful encounters and some loot. Usually works out just fine.

[sktarq]

Doesn't have to be a problem. I see nothing wrong with exploiting weaknesses if the campaign is set up to let the players steer where it is going. Unless you need the setting to remain as it is it's totally fine when the players drastically change things. It's fun for them.

Problem with this is that anyone who is using the rule of one is not likely to have the prep work to done to support the sudden shifts in direction caused by this issue.

Biggest problem comes with the PC's short circuiting major plot arcs etc suddenly leaving the DM in need of a plot.

[PseudonymAlter]

I don't know how well this translates to other systems (or ones that require a world being built from scratch), but the Dresden Files RPG has a fairly involved method of building a city, which seemed to work very well for someone who'd never done it before (specifically me).
Basically, you write down every faction you think might be even a tangential issue, then write down five lines summarising their motivations and characteristics (obviously fleshing out more significant ones with some more details). Give each faction a 'face' (not necessarily the person running it, just the person who the PC's would interact with the most with that faction). Then give the 'faces' motivations, much like you gave the factions some, and usually a few less-detailed people in each faction for them to interact with. Then you just draw in places which the factions would find significant (again, summarising the places in 5 or less lines), and how the factions cross over or interact with each other. Basically, you should have enough bare-bones information to ad-lib something should your players go off track. More significant factions also should probably have more than one character.

Also, finding weird myths or obscure urban legends and stealing those wholesale works very well. (I'm slowly building up to death by vampire watermelon).
I think the other advice here is probably much better (or has said exactly what I just did, but better), but I thought I'd throw my 2 regionally appropriate low value coins in. I hope this helps, and good luck.

[jqavins]

Problem with this is that anyone who is using the rule of one is not likely to have the prep work to done to support the sudden shifts in direction caused by this issue.

Biggest problem comes with the PC's short circuiting major plot arcs etc suddenly leaving the DM in need of a plot.

I've been there as well, as a player, and even that isn't necessarily a big problem. We (the players) found the perfectly legitimate but unexpected way to solve the problem, or declined to take on the "recover a lost item" quest because we thought it was just plain burglary, and left the DM with no adventure to run. So he hemmed and hawed and apologized for not having anything, and we put a movie in the DVD player, and hung out. It would be bad if that happened a lot, but once, or once in a great while, an unexpected hang-out session with friends is far from tragic.

I suppose my point here is that, as a DM, you don't have to be perfect. Perfectionism is a trap I have fallen into and overcome, repeatedly, and probably will again. I try to remember, and I will advise all others, that it's much easier to be good when you stop worrying about being perfect. This, of course, is not a reason to slack off, and if I'm not a perfectionist I am still a "pretty goodnessist." But two of the most important words in the English language are "Oh well."

[sktarq]

It's not that DM's have to be perfect.

It's that they have to set themselves to think on their feet. I find the rule of one builds bad worlds that accidently break FAR too often. But other people find it works for their style of games. While all games suffer those kind of hops off the plot (with few exceptions that are mostly player driven to begin with) I find this world building style to be more prone to it than other methods. That doesn't make wrong because every methods have pros and cons. But I wanted to point it out.






And yes it happens to me a lot. Including over arching plots.

Attempting perfection is equally silly to me. I would always advocate setting yourself up for the ability to improvise than a perfectly set setting or a preset plug and play when that need is called for.

[Zorku]

???

The idea here is that if you thinking up a cool location it probably doesn't rely very much on what's around it.

You've pictured a particular tavern and what it's like? What does it matter if it's next to some shoe shop or or a weaver's business? What does it matter if it's on the first side street or the fourth side street? Does it even matter what specific town it is in?
Unless you've created some really complex interaction already, this tavern can fit into just about any place that you would ever find a tavern.

So, maybe the first city that the party enters is big enough that it's got 12 taverns in it. You could decide exactly what street each tavern is on, and create all 12 taverns, stressing about trying to make each one different, and not knowing how you're going to organize this degree of detail for every damn thing in your campaign... or you could just come up with one tavern, and not actually define where it goes. Party goes looking for a tavern? Boom. As if by fate, they find this one.

This works fairly well because until the party goes somewhere, they don't know what's there. Once they have been there then they DO know where that inn is, so you wanna actually keep track of that, and you want to prepare another tavern in case they look for a different one, or go to another city.

Personally I do this a lot more with small dungeons. That isolated crypt where some local kids have been seeing ghosts? Could be outside of pretty much any town, mentioned to the party any time they pester the locals for adventure hooks to go investigate. The cult could be operating out of anywhere, the goblin encampment could be in any patch of forest, the dinosaurs could be on this side of the country or they could be on that side, etc.

They only get locked into place once the party has found them. It's like Schrodinger's plot hook.

You do probably want to cement a few things into place, like what city the king lives in (the lay of the land is going to constrict this a fair amount,) or where the castles are (again, because certain places make way more sense,) especially once you know that the party is concerned with your central plotline and people are going to be telling them where to go to find a specific thing- but most of the stuff that fills out the world just doesn't have to be rooted in place until you use it.

[sktarq]

The idea here is that if you thinking up a cool location it probably doesn't rely very much on what's around it.

You've pictured a particular tavern and what it's like? What does it matter if it's next to some shoe shop or or a weaver's business? What does it matter if it's on the first side street or the fourth side street? Does it even matter what specific town it is in?
Unless you've created some really complex interaction already, this tavern can fit into just about any place that you would ever find a tavern.

So, maybe the first city that the party enters is big enough that it's got 12 taverns in it. You could decide exactly what street each tavern is on, and create all 12 taverns, stressing about trying to make each one different, and not knowing how you're going to organize this degree of detail for every damn thing in your campaign... or you could just come up with one tavern, and not actually define where it goes. Party goes looking for a tavern? Boom. As if by fate, they find this one.

This works fairly well because until the party goes somewhere, they don't know what's there. Once they have been there then they DO know where that inn is, so you wanna actually keep track of that, and you want to prepare another tavern in case they look for a different one, or go to another city.

Problem with this . . . it can and often does matter what is around it. Sure if you party goes looking for a tavern. You can lead them to the one you want but if part of what makes it interesting is that the town guardmen are having a kegger in it you better be sure that the town HAS a guard force. And if you have a nice middle class joint on the ready and the party goes looking for a good time in the bad part of town you better be able to make the appropriate adjustments on the fly. Same if they go to splurge to celebrate their hard won dungeon delve- if you say this place is the best place in town then later show them how the nobles live they are going feel that something is off. Of if they ask to go to the nearest tavern when in the military district and your bar isn't crawling with off duty guards it will look just as odd. Just as much if you don't use the tavern in the city and they next go to a frontier village the tavern there is likely to be VERY different. And generally the more interesting a place the more specific it is, not a perfect correlation but high, so places that you can easily move from town to town tend to be more generic. Do it often enough and the players notice.

The idea that the party does not know what is there is not as true as many believe. They don't know for certain but very strong inferences can be made. . . the city has fresh vegetables for sale? The are very likely farming villages within a day's travel. If there is not then that is something interesting to investigate. If that sounds silly look at how many nothing nothing nothing CITY approaches are scattered in DnD and fantasy lore. If there is tavern then brewers with brewing skills are available in the town. If you want to solve such issues with magic...fine but you better have the magic users to do so or otherwise it is illogical. Obviously so.

And so understanding the area can be vital to keeping the sense of place and setting aliveness. . . Now how alive and immersive your game needs it setting to be is a group variable. I lean high but if your adventures are mostly dungeon clearing and the like then you need much less of this. But I'd still very much recommend instead of building a great tavern and then using it next time you need one. Build yourself a stack of notecards with tavern related ideas on them. When they ask for a tavern pull a couple that are area appropriate and perhaps a a couple basic sketch floor plans if you feel the need and you should have tavern that both fits the place AND is easy to run.

[Zorku]

If that sounds silly look at how many nothing nothing nothing CITY approaches are scattered in DnD and fantasy lore.

That seems like an argument for why they're likely to accept that the city has fresh vegetables even though you've surrounded it by wilderness on all sides.

-

Improvisational tavern building seems like a harder thing to manage properly at a table to me. It's a good goal to aim for, and you'll probably start to do that kind of thing automatically after you've DM'd enough, but having some general feel for what you're doing built up over a fair deal of time doing this seems like a necessary prerequisite for making that a smooth experience.

Moreover, if you've got a stack of cards with tavern ideas, roughly how many distinct stacks of cards do you need to cover your bases? I've got a vague idea of how many you're likely to suggest, but to a completely new DM they're not going to know if this is the only thing you need to put together this way or if they are supposed to have hundreds of piles of ideas to shuffle.

[jqavins]

Yes, and that's why s/he's asking us.

Staying with the tavern example, earlier I suggested four types. There should also be at least three sizes appropriate to different size settlements from hamlet to metropolis. Does that mean at least 12 prepared tavern cards? It doesn't have to. Cards can have instructions thought out ahead for adjusting a given base tavern to, say, different sizes or different social classes of clientele. I'd still suggest more than one card, but you don't need all twelve by any means.

If you want all twelve, go for it. That just means more work ahead of time and less work at the table, as well as things moving along more smoothly at the table. The drawback is that a lot of the work ahead won't be used. Does that mean it's wasted? That's a matter of opinion, but it does mean that the return on investment is low. Still, as the saying goes, it's better to have a thing and not need it than to need it and not have it. So preparing it and not needing it is never a complete waste, in my firm opinion.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How confident are you making up a whole tavern on the fly?
• How confident are you tailoring a prepared tavern to specific needs on the fly?
• How uncomfortable does it make you to hem, haw, and delay the game while making adjustments? Remember that time is perceived variably, and it will seem worse to you in the hot seat than it does to your players.
• How bothered are your players by a little hemming, hawing, and delay? See note above.
• How much time will you need to invest in each tavern that you prepare ahead?
• How onerous or enjoyable do find it making up taverns ahead? If you actually enjoy it - some do, y'know - then go ahead and make up lots!

And there are probably more such questions worth asking. Where the Rule of One comes in, in my opinion, is that I really wouldn't make up more than one of any type/size combination until they're used; one can indeed be placed on the fly anywhere it is appropriate.

And this, of course, is only taverns. All the same goes for temples, merchant shops, guard stations, army posts, docksides, inns, and so forth. So a small number of each with on the fly variations will really help. In some cases maybe even only one. Even if you really love making them up, start out with a small number of each so your game can get started and add to your decks in your off time if you want to.

For minor NPCs it's similar, and I'd move closer to the Rule of One. After all, taking guardsmen for example, how many types can there be? Friendly, belligerent, and all-business, I suppose. Scrawney, burly, and average? Making those sorts of variations on the fly should be pretty easy.