How do you deal with towns or cities? like players want to explore

>>53560976
Depends on the genre

>>53561562
fantasy

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>>53560976
Depends of the genre, setting and most importantly, players.

However, the easiest way to do it is by having functionnal part of city. The merchants sides, where poor people live, where rich people live, the administration, the guard and everything else can be found anywhere (baths, taverns, specialized shops and regular houses).

It works well if you're good at improvisation, if not, create "premade" cities in function of size and use random names generator.

And if your players wants to stay more in the city, let them do it. It's actually quite nice when the players have a location they often returns.

>>53560976
I ask the players to each give me a rumour/detail about the city their character has heard, we roughly sketch it out, I add a few ideas based on geography, a random table or two and whatever I'd already wanted to do, and ask if there's anything specific they want to do there. If they're going to come back I start writing down ideas and encounters that could happen there, note important people/faction, and have them do things to make the place different when the players come back.

Vornhiem, Yoon-Suin and Corpathium are all interesting osr city generation books/blogs that are worth checking out. Stealing ideas from things you've read, seen, etc. and modifying them is good too.

I recently had a problem with shopping, players say i want a weapon, then i dont know what to do

>>53563585
Wow time to reboot, kill them all with a super cyborg assassin guild from the future, you can't let them know you're unprepared.

>>53560976

Your players want to explore cities? My players only ever want to know where 3 things are:

- Booze
- Brothel
- Quest board

I even intentionally showed them a map of a small village of about 50 buildings and said a 1000 people live there and no one questioned it. Consider yourself lucky that players want to explore the city they are visiting.

>>53568019
Tell them to play WoW

>>53560976
My homebrew setting has a huge setting - I guess the fantasy equivalent to an urban sprawl - that takes up probably 1/4 of the map. Maybe slightly less. It's the size of two/three good sized US states put together.

>>53563585
If it's a mainstream weapon (sword, speat, war-bow), they find a merchant at a stall or near a forge hawking them for rulebook prices. The merchant either has a badass guard or is a badass himself. After all you don't stay in the arms trade long unless you're ready to deal with some violent unscrupulous people.

If it's near a conflict zone or otherwise a situation where weapons are in demand, then they're sold to civilians at a higher price.

>>53560976
Make it up as I go along.

>>53568045
God i miss WoW roleplaying.. does it even exist anymore?

>>53560976
Honestly I'm kinda making shit up as I go. I had a very clear idea of what the city would be (large city of people in constant twilight/darkness day/night cycle that's local tradition is to pickpocket, but immediately return the stolen goods out of honor) and then just ran with it. Made a few shops, set up factions on my own time, and now the players are invested and want to mosey on up to the powerful people and get the sweet loot in some of the shops backrooms. Worked out a major campaign plotline starting there and it looks like they're gonna follow it (of course, I have some isolated stuff if they don't).

They're attending a very swanky, rp heavy Masquerade tomorrow night and my entire plan is to set up stock stuff, throw in some NPCs they know and don't, have it hosted by a specific faction and then just make stuff up on the fly. I'm excited and think my players are too.

Good advice is to always take notes, make isolated points that you can move around (NPC names and their traits, major events unfolding, etc.) and then, if you're good at improve and thinking on the fly like myself and other GMs, just rolling with it. I'm probably in a better spot than others because I got a college degree in bullshitting though.

>>53568179
Wow, I mistyped. A huge CITY within the setting. Maybe about 85,000 square miles?

>>53560976
I drew out a simple map of the city and drew ONLY the parts that mattered like castles,taverns, docks, and merchant quarters.The rest of the city that they clamber around in are slums or normal neighborhoods with nothing to them.

I don't even RP shopping anymore.

If they want to buy something consult the pdf and tell me the total.

They always go to the same tavern to rest.

>>53560976
There is a way to make a full-looking city without expending huge amounts of effort. Going to require a slight amount of what may be considered railroading though.

What you do is just come up with a few interesting parts of your city. They can really be anything, but the important thing about them is that they need to be very noticeable. As soon as your players enter the city, they need to see the first landmark and you need to do everything in your power to entice them to go there. Once they go there, entice them with the next landmark and do everything in your power to get them to go there. Whenever they travel, just fluff/handwave it as being neighbourboods and kinda boring. By the end, your players will have "explored" the whole city, but only really gone to like 5 places.

Really easy to make 5 places anyway. Interesting tavern, market, local government building, and quest location is already 4 places.

>>53561863
>It works well if you're good at improvisation
This. I'm pretty good at making shit up as I go and making it believable and fit into the setting, but I'm a weird motherfucker. But if you can't Improvise, then you need to be a master planner and be a lot cleverer than all your players.

This is such a vague question.

How do you deal with what, specifically? If they wanna buy something, they have to ask around and find a store, and then they ask if the store has the item. If it's a normal, easy-to-find thing, you can direct them to a simple all-purpose General Store. Make the owner a cool, memorable personality they want to return to and bam, you have an easy source of news, leads, and local rumor for the party.

If it's something more esoteric, make them seek out specific people, dealers and exotic traders, and barter for the item or possibly go on quests or errands in exchange for it.

If they want to explore, let them explore. Make things up on the fly, it's a city so just create weird scenes, have people talking about random stuff, have a cool event happen in front of them. Make the city come alive with random and unspecific events that they players can, should they choose to, delve into. And if they do, maybe they find something worth investigating.

This ain't rocket science.