So you've been planning out your next gaming session and know your players are going to enter a town or city, but what should they encounter there? What kind of shops, services and buildings might they find? Below you'll find a download to a Free PDF I've pulled together that contains a list of buildings and trades they might expect to find. The list is by no means exhaustive, but should give you a solid starting point when designing an urban setting for your campaign, be that Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Pathfinder or more.
There is also a new set of RPG Town Building Type Symbol Brushes that you can download to help label your maps. Read on to find out more...or just scroll to the bottom, oh thee of lazy eyes!
Which buildings should you include?
In terms of urban structure, the building types will be dictated somewhat by one, or both of the following:
- Location: A port or meeting point of roads or rivers will provide access to travel and trade from many other areas, most likely resulting in a wide array of goods, fabrics and foodstuffs, as well as opportunities for a diverse selection of crafters to produce and trade their wares.
- Local materials: Is the area rich in woodland? This may give rise to a booming lumber trade, carpentry and fletchers; or perhaps there is an abundance of metal ore; this could give rise to a prosperous mining trade along with blacksmithing and armourers.
Building types can inspire encounters
Thinking about building types as early as you can isn't just immensely helpful in planning out the structure of your town or city, but also acts as a catalyst to inspire NPCs, encounters or plot hooks. Does your town have a furrier or tanner? Is he secretly obtaining hides in an all too untoward manner? Is there a reason his hides are so soft yet durable? Surely this isn't linked to rumour of grave diggers lately? Ok, that's maybe a bit dark, but you get the idea.
Grab the FREE PDF
As mentioned at the start of this post, the list below is most certainly not an exhaustive one, but will hopefully provide a good starting block and some inspiration.
The list comes in a Free 2 Page PDF. One page is a colour version, the second page a print-friendly black and white version (0.5MB in size)
View, download or print the PDF using the button below. Enjoy :)
Building Type Brushes Released
To help with creating a town or city for your campaign, I've created a new set of building type symbol brushes. Most of the buildings included in the PDF list have an associated brush, but you can obviously use them to depict whatever buildings or shops you feel are most suitable. The brushes are compatible with Procreate, Photoshop and Affinity Photo and come in a standard version, as well as a variant inside a shield enclosure. Click to learn more about the Town Building Type Brushes.
