Welcome to the first in what will hopefully be a fairly long series of articles discussing my campaign creation processes. In this particular case, I do have it a bit simpler than I usually do since I’m just going to be reworking and modifying a couple of existing adventures. But, over the years, I’ve never tried developing my fantasy setting more fully; I’ve had bits and pieces somewhat fleshed out, written plenty of fiction set there, but still have a lot of gaps that need to be filled.
So, with that in mind, I’m starting off with some thoughts on the process of developing a particular city I’ve had in my head for some time. Since the “Lost Mine of Phandelver” adventure is set near Neverwinter, and the Mind Flayer trilogy begins within a city of comparable size that wasn’t particularly fleshed out in the adventure books (though it is to some extent in other books, as I understand), it seems a natural place to begin. My hope is to make this city a hub of sorts for the campaign I’ll be crafting, with various hooks for side adventures that may or may not relate to the ultimate goal of stopping the mind flayer scheme.
What I Want From this City
First off, what do I want this city to feature?
- A name. This one may seem obvious, but given my historical difficulties at naming things, it’s a challenge that needs to be overcome.
- A lakeside/seaside location with a river flowing through the city proper. Makes sense for a trade hub and cultural center to have good accessibility.
- THE Whorehouse of whorehouses. This is the big idea that’s been bouncing around my head for quite a while; the most famous/infamous whorehouse in the land is located here.
- A magic academy (which may or may not be tied to the whorehouse) specializing in enchantment magic. Seems appropriate, no? This way the girls and boys have multiple ways to practice their charms.
- A shared temple to the goddesses of love (Erisaya and Yurisaya, one light, one dark); again, may be tied to the whorehouse in some way. But this shared temple will have some great significance to both faiths.
- A wide variety of NPCs, businesses, factions, plot hooks, etc. Pretty standard stuff at its core; the trick is to make them memorable and important to the players.
What’s in a Name?
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this kind of thing for me…what to name the city? I’ve always struggled for names, and that’s usually the case 99% of the time; sometimes I just have something come to mind that fits perfectly, but most of the time not. It always seems like the names that I run through just don’t fit; it’s probably just me grasping for perfection, and eventually, I wind up going for some kind of randomly generated name. I tried that here, but nothing stood out as what I wanted. This time, however, I had a different train of thought that seems to have worked out.
I had a trio of names come to mind as I thought about the city the other night: Avalon, Avarice, and Arcadia. Great names, sure, with some mythological/historical and literal meaning behind them, but I didn’t want to just use one of them for this city. So, I started playing around with them:
| Avalonia | Avadia | Arcalon | Arcadilon |
| Avaradia | Avarilia | Arcarice | Arcadion |
| Arcavalon | Arcavarice | Arcavarlon | Avaralonia |
As you can see, there are now quite a few more names that sound fitting for a fantasy setting, more than I needed for this exercise, but that just leaves more for later.
With all those choices, it just comes down to which one I like the best…which wound up taking a bit longer to decide upon than I’d hoped it would. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to go with Arcavarlon.
Arcavarlon – City of a Thousand Delights
Now that I have a name I can be satisfied with (and a few more I’ll likely use down the line), I can start fleshing out the city itself. And to do that, I’m going to need to develop some idea of the general layout of the city, keeping in mind the particular geography I’ve mentioned, and the currently known important locations (THE whorehouse, magic school, and the Erisaya/Yurisaya temple).
Starting with the geography…I know it’s lakeside or seaside, with a river running through the city to meet the larger body of water. It’s also located within a few days’ travel of a more mountainous region (conveniently enough to assist with my upcoming conversion work on the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure), and will likely have a few smaller communities in the surrounding region.
As luck would have it (perhaps bad luck in this case), I’d started a little campaign several years ago in which we played perhaps two or three games, and that was it. I did, however, draw a few maps for this short-lived campaign, one of which was an area map. As Arcavarlon was intended to be part of this campaign world, I’m pulling that map out of storage, and intend to eventually revamp it. For now, though, here’s the rough map:
There are no doubt some issues with the placement of certain geologic features here, and that’s something to be looked into further down the line, but for now, the upper left area would be where I’m going to focus. Seems to me like a perfect region for the great city of Arcavarlon and the upcoming campaign. And as you can see, there are plenty of additional locations to flesh out in the entire region, if I so decided, or if the players veer waaaay off course.
But what are the chances of that?
…
You know what…I’m gonna flesh out the surrounding region a bit more…for reasons…
That’s two of the six big items on my list, and that’s where I’m going to leave things for now. In the next volume of this series, I’ll be looking into some further development of the city proper, and on the attraction that put the place on the map… THE whorehouse of whorehouses!
Until next time!
