How I Design "Town" For an Old School Fantasy Sandbox Campaign

The home base is one of the most important elements of a sandbox campaign. Old School Renaissance games award Experience Points based on how much treasure is brought back to civilization. Player Characters recover hit points at a rate of 1 HP per day of rest. Characters need someplace to buy armor, weapons, gear, and consumables. The adventurers will also need to find information, aid, and hirelings for their adventures to be a success. Where do they do that? “Back in town” is how we generally refer to where PCs accomplish these tasks. A small town with an inn, a store or two, and a supply of generic NPCs are all that is necessary for a sandbox that is focused on exploration and dungeon adventures. What if you want your home base to be something more than a hostel for PCs to rest and recover before their next adventure? What if you want to run adventures involving investigation, secret societies, cults, or political intrigue? What if you want “town” to be a city full of colorful NPCs and mysteries? Images are in the public domain and generously provided by the Cleveland Museum of Art https://www.clevelandart.org/ Helpful Links and Resources Online What is a West Marches campaign? https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/ Exploration focused Hexcrawling https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl Demographics of a fantasy medieval city https://gamingballistic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Medieval-Demographics-Made-Easy-1.pdf https://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ https://medium.com/migration-issues/notes-on-medieval-population-geography-fd062449364f https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2021/11/demographics-quick-rule-of-thumb.html http://www.superdan.net/download/blog/deltasdnd/MedievalDemographicsInBrief.pdf Adventurer Conqueror King System has a detailed set of tools for determining the size of a polity, its population, and economics. https://autarch.co/adventurer-conqueror-king/ Hirelings, Henchmen, and other Random Generators Meatshields Fantasy Hirelings generator http://www.barrowmaze.com/meatshields https://www.npcgenerator.com/ Random Town Map Generator https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/town/