Do you enjoy the "cozy fantasy RPG starter town" trope or nah?
>>96711671Is this the town? If yes then yeah.
>>96711859I play a GURPS West Marches that was this.
>>96711859Why does this make me think of Lamentations of the Flame Princess?
>>96711671Nah, I enjoy the "begin in the outskirts of the starter town to explore and fight some weak enemies to get accustomed to the characters their builds/synergies, then continue the gameplay loop of downtime preparation > exploring new zones > getting into fights & managing resources > completing zones > downtime preparation to see how far the party can get before they're overwhelmed" fantasy game trope.
>>96711884That definitely makes for a faster paced game
>>96711671I like it if done right. Starter Towns are a great start to a campaign. However they're best just small towns off to the side of a kingdom and all over a major hub you always going back to unless done correctly.
>>96711671Absolutely I do
>>96713417https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAOKk8m3UroComfy music also helps
>>96711671It works better in a video game than a tabletop game, because a video game is paced in such a way that your "cozy fantasy starter town" section takes up maybe a couple of hours in a 50-80 hour game, not multiple sessions of your tabletop campaign.The RPG Cozy Starter Town trope exists to give the player of a vidya game a grounding in the world, establish a baseline "good world" that can be threatened or destroyed, and let the player see at least the protagonist's views and thoughts before they are thrust into darkness to fight.Also they often only involve the protagonist and maybe one other playable character.You can get similar effects in a tabletop game in ways other than the Cozy RPG Starter Town, without having to find reason for all the PCs of your game to be invested in this cozy little farming hamlet. You gather the party over the course of the first third or so of a video game, but you don't often see a tabletop game delaying recruitment of PCs because there are players who want to play.Also, in a vidya game people are more accepting of World Railroading, by which I mean "the meteor falls blocks the pass and you cannot get back to the starter town", removing the ability to return to the safe place you started out.tl;dr cozy RPG starter towns in vidya serve a purpose that you can get in other ways, since the structure of a vidya and tabletop RPG differ.
>>96711671I prefer to start in jail
>>96713492Comfy Bethesda start
>>96711864It's that one guy's LotFP AAR comics
>>96711859This is the opposite of what I like, as a person that obsessively places toilets in places where people in am RPG are supposed to inhabit. Multi-tier dungeons make zero sense, let alone dungeons. What use would a temple or dungeon have for 95% of those rooms?
>>96711671Sure. What'll make a game good or not is never going to be about "did I include XYZ thing?" It's gonna be about how well you used the things you did include. RPG starter towns can be a lot of fun to get the players invested in the RP side of things. They've got a small community that can ground them in a campaign. Also it makes it easier, as a GM, to get a grip on the world I'm trying to bring to life when I've got something small to work with that I can get into the details of. A "starter town" provides some nice tools for players and GMs.
>>96714021>Theres too much dungeon in my dungeon crawling game!Also this thread is about RPG towns, you are focusing on the wrong part
>>96714504It's a Role Playing Game, not a Dungeon Crawling Game. If I wanted to play a dungeon crawler then why would I ever play a trrpg? Videogames completely surpass tabletop dungeon crawlers.Also "starter towns" aren't any better or worse than an alternative as long as you're starting people in an event rather than just plopping them in some half-baked sandpit
>>96713492But is that jail in the "cozy fantasy RPG starter town"?
>>96716695lmao
>>96714537There is not a video game that gets anywhere close to old school dungeon crawling yet.
>>96711862No, you don't.
>>96711859FPBP
>>96711671For what purpose?
>>96711671I do enjoy the trope, when it done right With plenty to do in the town as a way to introduce characters, unwind the main plot slowly and maybe even have some light hearted fun along the way before the players set off to never return to face the real challenges of the session or come back to find it ruined/taken over by the BBEG
>>96726494one evil man does not just destroy a townwho did it? and more importantly, why?
>>96726937That for you to find out my friend, I ain't going to hand out the reasons on why the old man destroyed your town
>>96711671Only if it's facade for the people living there and in the context of the world the cozy starter town is seen as something horrific - blood farm for nice vampiress, town with festival where a few young lads and maidens leave the time at certain age, never to be seen again, sacrificed for the town's protecting the town. True Fae playing the Sims with the town, being sorcerer protagonist's grandma, mom, auntie, sister and love interest at the same time. Fake dream realm that some dream eating demon created to slurp positive emotions and happiness of mortals. The real cozy fantasy town should be revealed to exist only later in the story, to make players suspect that something would be wrong here too (it wouldn't be, till they mess it up).
>>96716695The jail IS the "cozy fantasy starter town".
Small town wedding/funeral
