Zoganza - An exercise creating interesting relations in a city
#osr #d&d #iron rings campaign
Two of the PCs just arrived at their first bigger city, Zoganza.
I want to give the city some forces (also called fractions) and relationships between the to help me improvise at the table.
Let us find out who the main forces in the city are, how they relate to each other and what the very next event will be.
The list of forces in the city is composed by:
- any force that came up during improvised play
- a couple of industries that give the city meaning
- minorities, because that always leads to interesting dynamics
Through play, we found out that the city has at least following forces:
- The Church (PC interacted with a prisoner of The Church)
- A Kontor (PC is selling goods at the Port)
- Royal Troops (PC saw how soldiers roam the streets)
To get a general feeling for the city I used this handy generator (based on Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross) to find out that the city has between 8 and 12 thousand inhabitants. If it will ever matter, the city will be around 9k inhabitants.
For every 2000 inhabitants I rolled on my list of industries. (I put my impulsive ideas in parenthesis)
- Construction (Quarry)
- Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation (Theater)
- Nonstore Retailers (Kontor of traders, already known to PCs)
- Motor Vehicle and Parts Dealers (Shipyard)
To find out who rules the city, a roll on the Settlement Characteristics table of the Referee Book of LotFP yields that the city is run by a Merchant Association. Sweet. I decided that they are the same as the “Nonstore Retailer” above. Perhaps this city is the biggest trading center around.
For some minorities, I decided to throw in some Nobles. Nobles seems to always disgust some of my players. So here you go.
Know I want to surprise myself for another minority. Rolling a modifier-noun combination on UNE NPC tables, I got “rational brutes”. I am have no idea who they are, so let’s come back to them later.
To determine how well they get along, I make a reaction roll for each possible pair.
Colors are based on the 2d6 reaction roll.
Bold green (12): absolute internal unity or strong external alliance (love)
Green (11-9): general internal agreement and favorable relations (friends)
Black or no link (8-6): Neutral and usual and unimportant internal conflicts
Red (5-3): internal struggles or external unfavorable relations (dislike)
Bold red (2): internal heavy conflicts and external heavy conflicts (hate)
I am not going to interpret all relations off the table, but I do point out some of the outlier and finally find out who the Rational Brutes are.
- The Kontor/Merchant Association has internal conflicts
- The Merchants and the Church fight a serious strife
- The Church is strongly opposed/offended by the Theater. Oh. Does the Theater critique the Church? Or do they have a more liberal moral standard?
- The Rational Brutes are in good relationship with the Church and the Troops (are they soldiers?) and show hostilities toward the Kontor and the Theater like the church. Are they payed bullies?
- The Troops and the Shipyard are allies. Are they building ships for the war? Does this tells us something about the war itself?
- The Quarry is in favor of Nobles. Perhaps a Noble owns the Quarry?
During play this map is already quite useful if PCs are interacting with someone or if in need to come up with a random encounter. Given the player are not leaving or blowing everything up, where will shit hit the fan next?
Lets pick one of the two heavy conflicts (1 - theater, 2 kontor) or the internal conflict (3 Kontor). My d3 tells me that the theater-church conflict is going to blow up next. At the same time another force is going to be affected.
(I roll a d8 on the 8 forces to know which one). The Nobles which don’t favor the Church. Will side with the theater? Or does a Noble get hurt while one of the Rational Brutes is trying to burn down the Theater?
I will let this sink and come up with an idea how to drag the PCs into all of this.
