Complex Towns

[RARodger]

I'm up to town number four, making this one of my longest running campaigns in quite some time. In the first couple we opened all the way with murder. Since lines were drawn at murder, the third backed down to sorcery, and the supernatural dial was cranked pretty high for town number three. So for town number four I want to ease off a little bit, give them a nice, messy story. In fact, I think I want to stop at sinning to see if the Dogs can wield more subtle weapons. *

But unsurprisingly, the situation I came up with wasn't very grabby. Frankly it didn't seem to involve enough of the town to merit Dog's intervention.

So I started to wonder—so far my other towns have all been developed serially. Have people built towns with parallel problems? Two or three points of pride sprouting simultaneously and leading to a series of interconnected but perhaps less minor crises?

If so, how did that work? How did you organize it?

* Don't get me wrong, the showdown between the Dogs and the Sorceress was very cool, as she used her command of plagues to quench their voices as they tried to denounce her. I just like contrast.

[jburneko]

I have.

My longest "complex town" was THREE Pride chains.  Not all three were taken up to Hate and Murder.  And I've done two or three double chain towns.  It works great and if you take both chains up to Sorcery you end up with some nice "dueling cults" action.

It's less however like two Pride chains developing independently and more like branching.  Basically someone feels entitled (i.e. Pride) because they witness someone else's Corrupt Worship.  That kind of thing.  It works best when you can interweave the chains rather than just have two independent sets of problems developing.

Jesse

[RARodger]

Yeah, I wanted something a litle differet this time, so wanted to do a few issues that didn't even hit hearasy to see what my players did with them. The first two ideas came pretty easy, and intersected nicely... I knew why the boy from family A was sleeping around, but why was the girl from family B? What was her story? Unfortunately, the third idea I had didn't nestle in so well, so it feels really tacked on.

The good news is we didn't get very far last session, and we won't be playing next week, so I have a couple weeks to rejigger it.

[Falc]

From some recent experiences as a player, after some earlier experiences as a GM, I've started to form the following opinions:

- The key point in a Town's progression is the Demonic Attacks. This is the point where the problems of the few become those of the many, which aligns neatly with the point where it goes from being the Steward's problem to being the Dogs' problem. This is how you 'grab' the Dogs through their authority and duty. If you stop before this (or if you stop at Demonic Attacks that only target people already involved), it's a bit too easy for the Dogs to just shrug their shoulders and ride off into the sunset.

- If you do want to stop before Demonic Attacks, I see little other choice but to make it personal for the Dogs. Involve their families, their friends, someone whose need they can't just ignore, even if it's not their duty.