So I'm just getting started up with a group and they've asked me to DM since the old DM had to bail. I'm working on alot of adventures already and how to tie em all in. So I figured the easiest way to do that would be to start out making a town to base all of thier adventures out of.

So what I am working on right now is locations in the town. Taverns, guilds, shops, and so on. I was wondering if anyone had just some great ideas for the names of places or ideas for features in the town. If nothing else, this is a chance to get your ideas into someone else's game!

I'm currently in a Wizards campaign being run by a friend - I have experience with Wizards, Savage Worlds, and Mutant Future. Have not touched D&D in years.

If I have any ideas for place names, I'll share 'em.

My friend populates his place names with whatever is sitting on his desk when writing campaigns. For example, we visited a town named Kodak lol.

Posted by Esoterik My friend populates his place names with whatever is sitting on his desk when writing campaigns. For example, we visited a town named Kodak lol.

lol. I did that one time. Just re-arranged the letters on things around the room. Turns out the letters of "microwave" can be re-arranged into some badass sounding elf names. ;)

But this town is pretty much going to be the only place we run out of. So it's actually going to be a pretty large city. And seeing as how they are going to be going to the same shops and buildings in this town, I want them to be things they end up liking. My ideas so far are...

Was thinking about having a tavern named "The Drunken Duck" that is an old pirate ship that washed ashore.

Was going to put the thieves/assassin's guild in the sewer tunnels. That'll make it so they can get everywhere in the city. They'll have a building as well that from the outside won't look like anything more than a boarded up and abandoned building. Inside will be lavish though. You'll only be able to get inside it through the sewers. Areas farther out from the "base" in the building will have smaller storeroom like areas for resupplying thieves and assassins as well as giving them a place to lay low if they are being pursued.

The city itself will have 5 districts and the outer walls will be laid out as a pentagon. The five districts will be based off of those walls and on into the center area where the royalty/government are based.

Since I've never really played a D20 game in real life, I'll just go on what I know from video games.

Large taverns and establishments within the city are certainly important, but every city has those. Truly memorable places always have something unique about them.

I have a few issues of Dungeon laying around and the most memorable bits of any campaign for me are the little things... such as a house owned by a friendly nutball that has thousands of doors.

That's probably common sense though.

Hmm.... I like the thousand doors idea. Maybe for a merchant of some kind that sells traps and such.

Repost from Jonno23:

I actually started going through the process of opening a pub when the economy tanked just before I took out the $400,000 loan. Thanks god that didn't happen. I have all the rights to the name out here when things get better.

It was to be called "The Dirty Shamrock"

My response - Oh. I do have Irish in my blood so I'm automatically drawn to it. I like it. I think I'm going to turn this into a competition. Get a poll up later and see which one wins out. =)

I tend to use already-created worlds, just to make it easy, but when I fill in the details, I like to use names that reference obscure movies or books or whatever. Or sometimes I look up the Jumble in the paper and use the jumbled words as names.

Another method I've used for personal names is to take regular, modern names and change a letter or two to make them sound like fantasy names. So, the name Valerie (my niece's name) becomes Valeria. Which, as it turns out, is a lot more common than I ever thought. Valeria became a recurring character in a campaign of mine.