If there’s one thing my detractors like to remind me – often, between choking sobs after I’ve eviscerated them over some issue of piss-poor game mastering – if there’s one thing my detractors like to remind me, it’s that there’s no one right way to run a game. The thing is, I know there isn’t just one right to run a game. I never claimed there was just one right way to run a game. Nor have I ever claimed that there is one objectively best way. I mean there is one objectively best way. It’s my way. But I don’t say that. At least, not in those words. Okay. Maybe I do. That’s not the point. The point is that I am very much aware that there isn’t ONE TRUE WAY to run an RPG. But what my critics – especially those who, laboring under the pre-requisite cognitive dissonance required to participate in Internet arguments, try to argue that their way is the right way, and my way is the wrong way – what my critics always forget is that there are lots of wrong ways to do it. Really wrong. And anyone who claims otherwise is lying. They don’t believe that crap themselves. They know there are wrong ways. Because they know I’m wrong. And man, do they want me to know it.

Now, I’m very vocal about the wrong ways to run games. There’s lots of things I have taken a stand against. Recently, I found myself virtually screaming over whether the players knowing monster hit points constitutes meta-gaming and is, therefore, a horrific, game-destroying evil that must be abolished and how you should properly punish any player who dares commit the mortal sin of asking about the current condition of any monster on the battlefield. Arguments like that are the sorts of things that make me understand why the founding fathers of the United States were so terrified of adopting actual democracy. The problem with the basic concept of “rule by the people” is that people are stupid.

Anyway…

One of the things that I have come out very much against in the past – he said, attempting to wrangle this Long, Rambling Introduction™ back to something resembling an actual point – is exposition. Exposition is the direct sharing of information by narration with the audiences. That is, the players. Basically, it’s when the GM stops the game and says “okay, now I’m going to speak directly to you and tell you things you need to know.” It’s basically like the opening text crawl of any sci-fi movie. And those are always terrible. Yes, even the ones in the actually very good Star Wars. I mean, holy hell, was there anything in the opening text of A New Hope that didn’t become abundantly clear within the movie? Honestly, imagine how much more impactful it would have been if we didn’t know exactly what the Death Star did until it blew up Alderaan. That would have been a nice gut punch. The sad thing is A New Hope had such a powerful, brilliant opening scene that told you almost everything about the Rebels and the Empire before the first line of dialogue even happened. But, it was Lucas. And the only one better at ruining Star Wars than Lucas is Kathleen Kennedy. Or Rian Johnson. Or J.J. Abrams. Or… oh, to hell with it. Let’s just say it’s become increasingly clear that the three good movies of the Star Wars franchise have been proven to be anomalies and that the franchise itself is a steaming turd with a few good moments that span roughly six hours.

Point is, exposition sucks. But it’s a necessary evil. I mean, you do have to communicate stuff to the players. There’s no way around that. But you should try to avoid it whenever possible. But this isn’t new either. I’ve said all that before. Just like I’ve bitched about Star Wars countless times before and pissed and moaned about metagaming arguments and One True Wayism and people who aren’t me too. And, considering I’ve been at this crap for over a decade now, it’s only natural for me to start to repeat myself. Hell, if my site were being run by Hollywood, it would have been rebooted twice already, and you’d be reading my origin story for, like, the seventh time right now.

But don’t worry. I’m not going into reruns. I’m not repeating myself. I promise this is new material. Rehashing old crap is what my book was for.

Here’s the thing: having discussed encounters, adventures, and campaigns extensively already, I’ve decided that it’s time to start tackling setting design. Time to start teaching GMs how to build their own worlds. Or at least their own little corners of existing worlds. Or non-worlds. I guess I need to talk more about the non-setting at some point. And foremost on my mind – because I’m actually starting a new campaign for a group of real-life victims right now – is the topic of designing settlements. Towns. Cities. Because most campaigns start in a town or city. And most campaigns use towns or cities extensively as part of their structures, either as a home base or as a series of hubs for adventure or as a series of safe spaces on a world map. And after looking through a bunch of different products and seeing how they present settlements – and how badly – I’ve found myself trying to figure out what actually a settlement is. From a game perspective. And what goes into it.

And as I sat and distilled my view of settlements – and how they should be built – down to some nice, simple, practical, useful stuff, it occurred to me that at least some of my advice was based heavily on how settlements are presented at the table. How they are used. And I found myself returning to a familiar piece of advice: “work your exposition into your narrative.” Or, more correctly, “show, don’t tell.” Except, in an RPG, it’s even better to “do, don’t show.”

Wasn’t I just saying how I wanted to bring this to some kind of a point? But here I am still dancing around it. Dancey dancey dancey.

Here’s the point: I want to talk about one of the most important jobs that settings – and specifically settlements – have to do at the game table. But I can’t. Because I’m afraid, most GMs don’t know how to handle that job. And I figured it would be fun to do something a little more practical by way of demonstration to explain it. To do, rather than show or tell. And that’s what this is. By way of three different examples, I’m going to show you how to do and how to show rather than telling. And then we’ll talk about how you actually create the stuff you’re trying to do or show another time.

Getting a Feel for the Place

If you didn’t read the Long, Rambling Introduction™ – or you did, and it didn’t help – let me start by saying this is all about setting. And establishing the setting. Now, setting is one of those narrative terms that everyone kind of understands but no one can actually define. The meaning is obvious: the setting just describes where a game takes place. It’s the world in which the game happens. But the ramifications aren’t as obvious. I mean, really, what does that mean? There’s not a literal world out there in which the story takes place. When we talk about world-building, what are we actually doing? What is the setting? Is it a map? Is it a history? Is it a mythology? Is it the list of game options that are available?

The truth is that setting is a really amorphous idea. Setting includes a lot of stuff. And different settings include different things. A setting can be a map, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a history, but it might not be. But, here’s the thing: we’re not going to try to define a setting right now. Because I want to tackle something more practical. I want to tackle how you present different aspects of the setting of your game to the players without falling back on dreaded exposition.

Specifically, the aspect I’m going to address is the feel. The tone.

Tone is – as you really should know by now because I just keep going on about it – tone is the overall mood and feel of a work of fiction. Like a game. And there are different levels of tone. There’s the overall tone of the whole thing. A game might be epic and heroic. Or it might be scary and pessimistic. Or it might be brutal and oppressive. Easy, right?

Of course, individual scenes can also have their own tones. While Lord of the Rings is epic and heroic, there’s that bit in Shelob’s lair and the part with the Cave of the Ghost Army. Those are pretty scary and hopeless.

But, here’s the thing: anything can have a tone to it. Not just individual scenes and entire games. A plot arc could have a tone. For example, in your mostly epic campaign, you could run a horror-themed adventure or series of adventures in the fall because you’re that type of person who thinks your campaign should be like an animated holiday special. And even the space between adventures can have a tone. Which brings us to settlements.

Settlements can serve as settings for adventure. But they mostly serve as the setting for the spaces between adventure. But that means they are often the places where adventures begin. So, they are a great place for setting the tone of an adventure or story arc. That’s the reason why horror-themed plot-arcs never start in bucolic, pastoral villages filled with Disney princess singing in flowery meadows about how the small-minded simpletons of the town are so unaccepting of song-and-dance numbers about their stupid small-mindedness and how the princess dreams of adventure. No, they start in some little Halloween Town filled with mist where no one comes out at night, and everyone is superstitious about everything, and there is a distressingly large number of cemeteries.

Moreover, instilling different settlements with different tones – different moods – also helps differentiate them. See, lots of GMs really fail to differentiate their settlements. Or, worse, they think places that look different are different. I mean, you can have the city of soaring crystal spires and the port city of canals and the mountain fortress city and all that crap. But, if the only difference is the art style and the map, once the players start spending time in the town itself, one town really does feel like another. Especially if they don’t get into a lot of fights and aren’t constantly looking at the map.

Beyond that even, an evolving tone can help show the players that they live in a dynamic, changing world. Perhaps one whose changes they are driving. As the heroes fight back the darkness, Halloween Town might lighten up a bit. Tonally. I mean, the weather doesn’t have to clear up. Unless, of course, they finally take out the Pumpkin Vampire whose presence is literally tied to the ecology of the place. But the mood of the place can lift noticeably. And Disney Town can become darker and more oppressive to emphasize the looming threat of war.

Point is that establishing – and evolving – a settlement’s tone is a really useful trick to shove up your GM arsenal.

Now, I’m not going to talk about defining that tone or creating your settlement today. The rest of this is about something more practical. I’m going to give you some examples of how to actually build that tone into your game without just telling players outright what the place is like. And I’m going to do that by giving examples. Which means, we’re going to need some tones. Aren’t we.

A Few Simple Settlements

When it comes to creating a settlement – especially when it comes to establishing the tone of the settlement – less is more. GMs LOVE to overcomplicate this stuff. They write complex histories for every town, and multiple factions and power structures and they establish different neighborhoods and…

Look, that sort of crap is great if you’re running an adventure or a series of adventures or a campaign IN the settlement. You need those hooks. But if a settlement is just the place to start and end adventures, to give the adventures a context, and to give the heroes a safe space to buy stuff and level up, that’s all a waste. And not a waste of the “if you find that sort of thing fun, go ahead and do it” variety. It’s a waste of the “it’ll do your game no good and will actually probably make your game worse” sort.

At most, the players will spend only one or two short scenes each session in the town. And those scenes are going to be just scenes. Not encounters. Oh sure, sometimes, there’ll be a little more action in the town. And it’s always possible to have a town-based adventure suddenly come up later on. But, as with everything, the level of settlement detail should grow in proportion with the amount of screen time the settlement gets.

The thing with tone is that repetition is important. Tone is something that gets established over time and with repeated applications. If a town has a xenophobic feel to it, it’s going to take a lot of xenophobia to make the players feel that. And if you’ve only got one or two small scenes a week to work within the town, trying to make the town feel both xenophobic and, say, oppressed, and, I don’t know, gloomy, you’re not going to be able to repeat things over and over again.

The point is to start every town with a nice, simple, single tone. Expand that out into a story detail. And then keep working that into the game over and over until it sinks in. Once it’s established, say, after a month of sessions, you can expand on it. Add another small detail that works with the first. Of course, if the players investigate, if they dig, and they end up spending more time in the town, you can add more details. But you still want to go with a slow burn.

The other thing to recognize is that a settlement’s screen time tends to wane over time. That is, settlements generally get most of their screen time when the players first arrive. In fact, a smart GM will draw out the scenes in a new town to make sure the town gets plenty of screen time as the heroes arrive, find an inn, explore, do some shopping, meet some of the locals, and so on. After that, they will usually just be passing through the town on their way to and from adventures with the occasional scene in town setting up an adventure – e.g., with a quest giver – or sometimes hocking loot, buying supplies, doing research, or seeking useful services.

So, whenever you introduce a new settlement, you want to keep the settlement simple. No matter what your future plans are, keep it simple. Pick one general mood, one tonal element that overlays everything, and a single story detail around that to put the tone in perspective.

Let’s rattle off three quick settlements, pick some simple tones, and then build a story detail around it.

First, let’s start with oppressed. I like oppressed. I want a settlement that feels oppressed. That’s a good tone. There’s this crushing weight pressing down on things. People are dispirited. Hopeless. It’s the sort of place that needs heroes, right?

Now, we need a story detail. It’s nice to have a tone, but it’s useless without a reason. The town is oppressed because it’s under military occupation. The lord was ousted by a rival lord, and the army is now occupying the town. The people are scared, but they are hopeless. They’ve been overpowered.

And that’s all the story we need for now. We can always add more details later.

Let’s do a compare-and-contrast thing by taking a similar, but different, tone. That way, I can show you how the devil is in the details. Let’s use a tense tone for our next settlement. A pregnant tone. Let’s make a powder keg. A ticking time bomb. A storm on the horizon. Something bad is coming.

Why? Well, let’s use the same story detail. Just so I can show you to show the differences between two similar things. We have another town that’s also occupied by the military. But this town isn’t oppressed. They haven’t given in. They are made of stronger stuff. It hasn’t come to rebellion or violence yet. Things are too evenly matched. But it could. And the soldiers know it. It’s like two very big, very angry dogs on opposite sides of a very flimsy fence that either could tear through at any moment.

On a happier note, let’s have a contented settlement. A place where things are going right. People don’t have any real complaints. Things are just good. That sort of settlement is great because it’s just itching for an invading army of orcs. And, if you can get the heroes to really buy into the contentment of the place, then the inevitable sacking and pillaging come as a major emotional gut punch. Especially if it’s the heroes’ fault that the place gets sacked.

Now, it’s easy to mistake a tone for a story detail. Contentment is a tone. Without a story detail to explain it, it’s boring. It doesn’t give anything to build on later. And if you go with a boring detail like “it’s content because nothing has gone wrong lately,” well, that’s not much better than no detail at all. So, let’s say this town is blessed by a particular god. Some god of home and hearth and community. It was founded by a priest, there’s a nice temple in the middle, the people are grateful, and so things just tend to go well.

So, those are our towns: Underthumb, Powderkeg, and Bucolia.

Now, the rules for this little activity are: you – as the GM – are not allowed to tell the players directly what the towns are like or their histories or special qualities. You are not allowed to exposition. So, what do you do?

Sneaky Narration: Showing Instead of Telling

Let’s start with the old writer’s adage of “show, don’t tell.” What does that mean? Well, in fiction writing, it generally means “use examples instead of exposition.” For example, if there’s an honorable warrior type character, you could simply say “Wrof was an honorable warrior” right in the narration. If you suck. Or you could actually put Wrof in a scene in which he gets to be an honorable warrior. Maybe, someone insults Wrof’s honor in a bar. And Wrof beats him up. Easily. Because the guy sucks at fighting. And Wrof very clearly only uses the minimum amount of force necessary to stop the guy fighting him. Maybe he even says “stop fighting, you can’t win, and I don’t want to hurt you.” Maybe the guy pulls out a knife and tries to kill Wrof, and Wrof disarms him and then tells him to run. Something like that. That way, the audience can figure out that Wrof is all honorable and stuff.

That’s showing, not telling. In fiction writing. In GMing, showing is a little different. As a GM, showing is about using the power of narration to get something across to the players. It’s about adding details to your narration to convey, oh, say, the tone of a settlement.

Now, if the settlement is simply a place to rest, shop, and recover, the players won’t spend a lot of time there. Mostly, what they will be doing is experiencing short scenes in the town and transitioning through the town. So, that gives you two opportunities to show the players the tone of the town. You can do it when you’re setting a scene, or you can do it when you’re transitioning between scenes.

You might, for example, have a scene in which the heroes go to the town’s market square to buy some stuff. Once the heroes get to the market, you’re going to set the scene, right? You’re going to describe that market and invite them to act. Or if they go to an inn, you’re going to describe the common room and the landlord and then invite them to act. Remember this scene-setting stuff? I talked about it a long time ago. If you’ve forgotten about it, you’ll be able to read about it in my upcoming book.

Now, those sorts of minor “in town” scenes aren’t super common. Many GMs skip them altogether. Some tables, though, live for that crap and play every shopping trip. I don’t recommend either approach. I recommend splitting the difference. It is important for every game to have at least a few “a day in the life” type scenes that help establish the tone of the world. It just helps the players remember that they are playing characters in a world, not just stat blocks in a strategy game. What it also helps gives the players a reason to do the things they are doing. But too many of those scenes are a waste of time. I tend to play out a few “day in the life” scenes when the heroes arrive in a new settlement or when a new campaign starts. Thereafter, about once every session, I’ll make sure at least one minor “day in the life” scene happens. Usually between adventures. If my players like them, I’ll add a few more. They only take a few minutes.

More often, though, the players are transitioning through the streets of town. Remember, every time the players enter or leave a scene, there’s a little piece of narration that establishes how they get from one scene to the next. When they leave town, there’s a little bit of narration that says, “you leave the inn, head through town, and leave by the north gate.” And let me tell you something: those are frigging gold for setting tone.

Here’s the rule: every bit of scene setting and every transition is an opportunity to remind people of the tone. Not just settlement tones either. All the tones. Dungeon tones. World tones. Campaign tones. Every bit of scene setting and every transition should convey tone. Scene setting usually conveys the tone of the scene that’s about to happen. But if the scene is just a minor nothing of a scene and doesn’t really have its own tone, it needs to pick up the tone of the setting or settlement or dungeon or whatever.

Here’s how you mine that gold.

Think about the story detail that creates the tone you chose for your settlement. Now, think of all the evidence for that story detail someone might see in the world. And a list of all that evidence. All those signs.

Let’s take Underthumb. It’s an oppressed town. Why? Because it’s under occupation by a powerful military regime that has broken the peoples’ spirits. Okay. How would you know that – or guess that – if you were wandering around in town? What would you notice? Well, you’d notice soldiers, right? But that’s not good enough. Soldiers can be legitimate police, or they can be an oppressive military regime. What separates one from the other? Well, people interact with legitimate police. They do everything they can to avoid interacting with oppressive military regimes. In fact, the people do everything to avoid even being noticed.

So, you’d see soldiers. And you’d see people giving them a wide berth. And trying to avoid being noticed. They’d keep their heads down. They wouldn’t make eye contact. They’d be quiet. They’d go about their business. No one would be talking to anyone for fear of being called a conspirator.

Moreover, people would be slouched. Stooped. Shuffling. They are just going about their business trying to get through the day without getting harassed by soldiers. They might be jumpy. Panicky. If something starts to go down, the people might hurry on their way. Not run. Not panic. Running gets you chased. They just shuffle along faster. They wouldn’t look back, wouldn’t look to see what’s going on. They’d just move on.

Meanwhile, the steely-eyed soldiers would be standing tall. They have the power. And they know it. They like it. They stand in groups. They chat. Maybe they even make fun of passers-by. They degrade the people moving around them. People who conspicuously ignore them.

Every time you have to set a scene or every time you have a transition, work one of those details in. Downcast, slouching, dispirited people; domineering soldiers; people who don’t want to be noticed; people getting out of the way; people going about their business without joy. The streets are quiet.

In the market, shopkeepers don’t hawk their wares; they just wait to be noticed by potential customers. Transactions are completed quickly with a minimum of barter. In the inn, people are sitting quietly at tables, drowning their sorrows or eating in sullen silence. Except maybe the raucous soldiers at the one table getting handsy with the barmaid who doesn’t show any reaction. In the streets, everyone moves aside, and everyone hustles away from the party because they are just another source of attention.

What about Powderkeg? Powderkeg is divided between two groups who hate each other. And two groups who fear each other. And the balance between fear and hate is close enough that a fight could break out any day. The soldiers know a riot will get them killed. The people know the soldiers could cut them down. But the soldiers have a duty to suppress any riot, and some of the people are willing to die to oust the soldiers. What is that like?

First, everyone is alert. Everyone knows trouble is brewing. So, everyone is on their guard. Soldiers have their hands on their weapons. People are keeping a lookout. And everyone is quiet because no one wants to miss an incoming sign of trouble. People also find solace in groups. The soldiers stay close together, and the people stay close together. And there’s a lot of space between them. The streets are filled with cliques, with knots of people, all keeping an eye out and all talking quietly. At this point, there is no business as usual. The soldiers are out as a show of force. People are out on the streets so they can stay together and watch out for each other. And everyone is probably armed.

In the market, there’s probably almost no business being conducted. Vendors are quiet and furtive. Knots of citizens are muttering darkly, making plans, and eyeing the soldiers hatefully. Groups of soldiers are standing tense, staying quiet, keeping on guard, and ready to defend themselves. An inn’s common room might be divided between tables of whispering citizens and tables of quiet soldiers, too nervous to drink or dice or relax. No one is playing. Everyone is ready to strike.

See how even though you have the same basic story detail in Underthumb and Powderkeg, your list of narrative details is substantially different? That’s the trick. Create the tone, explain it with a story detail, and then come up with a list of narrative details to sprinkle into every bit of narration.

What about Bucolia?

Obviously, content people are relaxed, friendly, and chatty. They know each other. They get along well. And that’s going to be evident everywhere. People are going to smile at each other. They’ll say hello. They’ll stop and linger. They will be nice to strangers. Maybe even charitable. They might want to share their good fortune. People will be joking. They’ll be laughing. Moreover, because they don’t have much trouble, they’ll assume there isn’t trouble on the horizon. They’ll give the PCs the benefit of the doubt. And anything that goes wrong will catch the people by surprise. But they aren’t likely to panic. They’ll tend to underestimate anything that happens. The sort of people who stand around gabbing and gawking at a disaster instead of running from it unless the danger becomes so obvious it can’t be ignored.

But the reason for Bucolia’s contentment is because of their commitment to the god of home and hearth and community. And that implies a few things. First, it implies that family and community are important. There will be few loners, and there will be lots of kids of every age. After all, tight-knit communities with strong family values breed like rabbits. And they will probably pay a lot of respect to their deity. The god’s symbols and colors will be prominent, as will other icons and symbols. There might be lots of traditional knickknacks that come from their traditions. Think horseshoes over doors or dreamcatchers or some other symbol of magical protection or blessing.

In the market, everyone knows everyone, and no transaction can get done without an hour of small talk first. In the inn, people are probably constantly calling hellos to each other, stopping by each others’ tables, and passing the latest gossip. In the streets, there’s going to be friendly howdy-dos and hat-tips from the residents while kids run everywhere playing games without a care in the world.

Now, the key to using these details properly is to go for quantity over quality. Every time you have to set a scene in town unless that scene has a tone all its own – like a tense negotiation or combat as part of an adventure – every time you have to set a scene, include a tonal detail from the pile. Never have a scene in Powderkeg without a knot of conspiring townspeople or a group of nervous soldiers near at hand. Or a group of soldiers eying a knot of civilians warily. Or a group of citizens staring with hate-filled eyes at a small group of soldiers. And there should always be children playing or gossipy housewives gossiping everywhere in Bucolia. And whenever you have a transition in Underthumb, make sure the party is walking past groups of people with eyes downcast or raucous, fearless soldiers standing proud and sure. But don’t overdo it. Insert one small element into every scene or transition. One sentence. No more. Just make sure there’s one in every scene. And don’t worry about repeating yourself a little. If you overuse the playing kids a little, the players won’t think you ran out of ideas. They’ll think you’re really good at telling them this town is a happy place without just expositing at them. Repetition breeds memory.

Encountering Scenes: Doing Instead of Showing

Now, inserting small details into every bit of flavor text is a good way to make sure the players never forget the tone of the town, even when they’re in the middle of other stuff. That’s some good showing instead of telling. But, when it comes to role-playing games, there’s an even better option than showing. There’s what I call: doing, not showing. And by that, I mean letting the players do something instead of just showing them something.

How do you do that? Well, instead of just inserting flavor text into other scenes, add a scene that allows the players to interact directly with the tone of the place. Something that calls upon them to act. And I mean something more than a “slice of life” scene like renting an inn room or buying stuff for the upcoming adventure. And also more than an interaction with a quest-giver that exists to set the next adventure in motion. A scene whose sole purpose is to make the players interact with the tone of the settlement in a direct way.

You might compare these to random encounters or random events in a dungeon. But instead of coming from one of those stupid random tables in one of those “1,001 Truly Random Encounters,” they are carefully crafted to shine a spotlight on precisely what’s going in the town. And to ask the players to respond it.

For example, in Underthumb, the players might overhear some soldiers insulting the barmaid loudly and making very suggestive remarks that are obviously upsetting her. She won’t respond, of course, and no one else is going to step up to defend her. But the players might. And when the players do, the landlord and the barmaid might beg them not to get involved and even apologize to the soldiers. It might turn into a fight. It might brand the players as troublemakers amongst the soldiers and townsfolk alike. Remember, though, that such scenes shouldn’t give the PCs the chance to change the tone or the story details. That’s what adventures are for. The townsfolk shouldn’t suddenly decide that their heroes are here. They should fear retribution and remain broken.

In Powderkeg, the heroes might see three civilians follow a soldier into the alley with clear malice intended. Maybe the PCs will help. Maybe they will try to diffuse the situation. Or maybe, by the time they follow, the civilians are gone, and they are discovered standing over the corpse of the soldier.

Alternatively, maybe the PCs are challenged on the streets by a civilian to declare an allegiance. And all those quiet little scheming groups – soldier and civilian alike – stop to watch. To size up the newcomers and see which side they sit on. Whichever side they choose could cause trouble.

In Bucolia, the heroes might be taunted by obnoxious children who are just being children. They have the fearlessness of youth combined with the fearlessness of living in a town where nothing has ever gone wrong. Maybe they are asked to make a donation. Or maybe they get caught by a gossip who wants to bend their ear for an hour. Or who wants the latest news from every corner of the kingdom. Maybe there’s an impromptu reel or communal dance at the inn, and the PCs are swept up in that. Maybe one of the PCs turns the head of some young villager who is bored with their currently pastoral relationship and decides an adventurer is just the thing, even if it makes their current partner jealous.

Just as with the narrative tricks, you don’t want to overdo this crap. Remember that an RPG is a game of adventure. It’s not a game of playing house. And these scenes don’t – and shouldn’t – advance any sort of plot. They exist to establish the character of the settlement in an interactive way and to show how that character can make trouble for the PCs. Do not build an adventure out of this crap.

I tend to use these sorts of scenes frequently when the players first arrive in a new town to break up their explorations and allow them to get to know the place. As the PCs spend more time in the town, I make them rarer and rarer until they tend to come up once every two sessions or so unless the PCs purposely go wandering in the town seeking such interactions. And even if they do, I tend to keep that crap under control.

Because, again, game of adventure not game of The Sims.