Given that I pride myself on practical, actionable advice — rather than vapid, hollow aphorisms like “make the game interesting” and “make sure everyone has fun” — given that I pride myself on practical, actionable advice, I waste a hell of a lot of time on theory and high concepts and s$%& like that.

I claim that’s because, as a GM, you’ve got to be a narrator and a referee and a game designer and manage an ever-changing gameplay and story experience. This means you’ve got to be able to make good decisions in totally unique situations. You’ve got to be able to handle anything that happens at the table. Even when you’re running a published module, you’ve got to keep the game going when the players start coloring outside the lines.

The problem is there’s never, ever a single, correct way to handle anything. When the players go way off script, sometimes the best approach is to stop play and say, “look, we’re not playing the game we agreed to play anymore, so let’s fix that,” and sometimes the best approach is just to rewrite the whole damned game and start running homebrew. And choosing between those best approaches is down to who you are, who your players are, and why you’re playing these pretend elf games anyway.

Thus, I talk about all the high-concept crap so that you’re ready for the inevitable moment when the rules fail, the module fails, the advice fails, and you’ve got to make the best call you can. In other words, I’m trying to empower you to act the part of game designer and narrator and referee instead of computer-executing-game-program. And it’s to your credit that you actually read the s$&% I write.

But the real reason I write all this high concept, theory crap isn’t that noble. As I recently and semi-accidentally revealed in The Angry GM Supporter’s Discord Server — which you can join by pledging your support — the real reason I write this crap is that there’s a lot of people willing to pay me for it. Thanks for that.

Today, I’ve got some more conceptual, theoretical crap to do with Towns in RPGs. I promise we’ll get to practical, actionable Town-building s$&% soon.

Town Mode: Why Even Bother

Welcome back to Town Mode. That’s my GMing masterclass about building, running, and teaching your players to play in RPG Town. I’m your instructor, Professor T. Angry, GM. You can call me sir. Or just don’t call me anything. Because I’m the professor. So I’ll do the talking and you can do the shutting up and listening.

Last time, I introduced the idea of Town Mode. The idea that, during an RPG campaign, the heroes will periodically undertake fantastic adventures and then return to Town to rest, recover, and prepare for the next adventure. And when the heroes get back to Town, your game will switch from Adventure Mode to Town Mode. And it’ll play differently. And even though I didn’t explicitly say it last time — unless I did; I don’t pay attention to what I say because that’s your job — even though I didn’t say it explicitly, those bouts of Town Mode will generally eat up the better part of a game session.

Wasting Entire Sessions on this S$&%

Yes. You read that right. For every two or three sessions your players spend having exciting adventures, I expect them to spend at least half a play session — and probably an entire session — dicking around town. And dicking around in Town Mode.

Seriously.

Now, some of you have finally learned to trust me. When I say something like that, you think, “well, Angry’s got a good reason for saying it so maybe I’ll just try it for a couple of months and see if my game feels better for it.” But I get a lot of skeptics in my classes. And you skeptics are all thinking, “waste an entire session of my awesome fantasy adventure game watching my players dick around Town? Why? So, they can level up their characters and buy equipment in the most complicated way possible?”

Well, guess what skeptics? You actually have a point. When you zoom way the hell out, all that really comes out of this Town Mode s$&% is that the players get to do all the math and paperwork they’d normally do between sessions at the game table instead.

Math and Paperwork: The Real Reason Everyone Plays RPGs

A D&D character’s life generally comprises two phases. And here, I’m talking the lives of the characters in the world. D&D characters are either doing adventures or getting ready for adventures. Because, between adventures, there are certain chores to be done. Treasure needs selling, supplies need buying, equipment needs upgrading, adventure hooks need hunting for, and challenges need research and reconnaissance.

Those chores are reflected in the players’ between-adventure work. Between adventures, there’s paperwork to be done. Treasure needs selling, supplies need buying, equipment needs recording, levels need upping, and character sheets need maintaining.

Town Mode takes all that between-adventure maintenance — the in-world character chores and the game-table player paperwork — and makes it part of the game. But there are other ways to handle this s$&%.

Town Away from the Table

In most games, this between-adventure character-maintenance crap gets handled away from the table. Between sessions, whenever it’s necessary, players do the s$&% they need to do to maintain their character sheet. Level up, buy supplies, upgrade equipment, and so on. Because that’s s$&% players can do at home. Given the easy access to character maintenance software and communication platforms like Discord, players don’t even need the books anymore.

And that’s led to more s$&% shoved into the void between sessions and away from the table. GMs let their players craft items, maintain contacts, interact with NPCs, and even play out minor interactions away from the table these days.

So it is that lots of GMs ask their players to go home and decide what they do with the X-many days they have in Town and do all the necessary bookkeeping and paperwork away from the table. Then, at the start of the next session, those GMs just cover that crap with a short narrative summary.

I can see the appeal. Hell, I used to do that myself. Shoving all that crap into the between session space meant we spent the valuable table time on the actual adventure parts of the fantasy adventure game we were gathering to play.

Why would I ever waste whole sessions on Town Mode?

The Invisible Benefits of Town Mode

Let’s get something straight: Town Mode is not a waste of time. If it was, I wouldn’t tell you to do it. And I wouldn’t be writing 40,000 words about it. Which is about how many words I expect to blow on this series. Town Mode only seems like a waste if you focus on the fact that the only tangible outcome is that character sheets get updated.

But there are actually four major aspects of the entire TTRPG experience that benefit from blowing table time on Town Mode.

Empowerment

First, let’s talk about Empowerment. During a roleplaying game campaign, the characters and the players both get more effective over time. That is, players and characters can handle greater challenges as time goes on. Characters, because they gain better stats, better gear, and better abilities. Which is what we call Avatar Strength. And players because they gain a better understanding of their characters’ abilities, a better understanding of the game’s world, and are better able to work as a team. So they can come up with more complex plans to solve problems and can make better conjectures and draw better conclusions. We call that s$&% Player Skill.

Now, all that character maintenance s$&% I mentioned above? That’s pretty much the process by which Avatar Strength grows. That’s when characters gain levels, upgrade equipment, and earn new abilities. But there’s a whole bunch of other crap that feeds both Avatar Strength and Player Skill that isn’t built into character maintenance. Like learning about the world. And making decisions that affect the world. That s$&%’s empowering too. The primary means by which players gain Player Skill is by playing the game. At the table.

It’s easy to say the players can do all the character maintenance away from the table, but there’s way more to Empowerment than just character maintenance. And a lot of it gets flushed down the crapper when you move the between-adventure chores into the void between sessions.

Gamefeel

Angry invented a new word. Again. Take a drink.

Gamefeel is the word I use to describe the satisfying gameplay experience TTRPGs are supposed to provide. As opposed to the satisfying narrative experience TTRPGs are also supposed to provide.

Now, Gamefeel’s a vague, nebulous thing. It’s all the qualities that make the game feel good to play. And even though Town Mode seems like it puts a big ole pause on gameplay — and it kinda, sorta does — it enhances Gamefeel nonetheless.

I’ll show you how below. For now, though, I just want you to know the word.

Pacing

I didn’t invent that word. But it seems I’m the only one who knows what it means. Pacing’s not about the passage of time. It’s not about how much game you squeeze out of a play session. Nope. It’s another feeling word. Vague and nebulous. In this case, it’s how the speed and tension of the in-game, in-world action affect the play experience. A game that’s always moving at a breakneck speed — always tense — is really exciting. But it also wears players out. They can only handle that s$&% for so long. Likewise, a game that’s always slow and strategic is very engaging. It gets the noggin’ joggin’. But it’s also dull. People need excitement to stay engaged for long.

If you’ve got more than two brain cells rattling around your cranium, you probably know where I’m going with this. Town Mode is like the brake section in the middle of the roller coaster. It keeps the train on track and keeps everyone from dying of excessive G-forces. But I’ll get more specific about this below.

Worldsense

Take another drink. Because I’m coining another new word here. A partner to Gamefeel, actually. Worldsense refers to the illusion that an RPG isn’t just a game. It’s also a story that unfolds in a fictional world. Specifically, a fully developed, fully detailed world full of stories. Even if that isn’t true.

Without Worldsense, a TTRPG is just a game. It’s just an abstract pile of challenges to overcome. Look, the board game Scolville isn’t really about pepper farming. It’s a color-and-pattern-matching auction game with a pepper farming skin slapped on it. It’s got no Worldsense.

By the way, it’s the synergy between Worldsense and Gamefeel from which all that narrative crap arises. Narrative — the game’s story — is an emergent thing that comes from playing a game in a world. This is why storygames are such horses$&%. But that’s another story.

Also, by the way, Worldsense is where emotional engagement comes from. It’s what makes the players give a crap about the world and its characters instead of just trying to win the game.

By making Town Mode an actual part of the gameplay experience — instead of just a thing to handle in the void between sessions or in a brief summary — you greatly enhance the Empowerment, Gamefeel, Pacing, and Worldsense of your TTRPG campaign. How? Well, it’s down to what actually happens in Town Mode. Or rather, what you deliver in Town Mode.

What Happens in Town Mode?

I explained last time that Modes of Play are ways of slicing up the gameplay experience based on what’s actually happening in the game. So, what actually happens in Town Mode? Well, that’s really down to what the players get out of Town Mode. What sorts of gameplay resources can they acquire? And what sort of experience do they experience?

There are actually nine things that come into the game in Town Mode. A mix of resources and gameplay experiences. When you’re running the game in Town Mode, those are your goals. The things you’re trying to dole out. Or make happen. And I’m going to tell you what they are. But first, a couple of warnings. Quick ones.

Warning the first: remember that TTRPG Modes of Play are soft, squishy, implicit, fuzzy things. So the list I’m about to give you? It’s a list of thing that tend to happen mostly in Town Mode. Generally speaking. They’re not exclusive to Town Mode. And the list ain’t exhaustive. It’s not everything that can possibly happen in and only in Town Mode. Just s$&% that happens best and most often in Town Mode.

Warning the second: this s$&%’s abstract. It’s mostly about abstract resources and thematic experiences. This ain’t mechanically nitty-gritty. In play, the characters don’t Develop or Acquire Resources, they go shopping. Or they network. Or they train and study and practice. And while they’re doing that s$&% — while they Develop or Acquire Resources — they also do other s$&% too. Like Interact.

It’s like this. Say a character studies magic with Rabalastre the Rotund in Town. As a result, the PC might end up with a bunch of new spells in his book. And, depending on how you play that out, the PC might also end up learning some interesting things and improving their rapport with Rabalastre so Rabalastre might provide favors later. In the gamespeak language of Town Mode, we’d say the character Developed and Acquired Resources and Interacted and Gained Information. And because they chose to spend their limited time with Rabalastre, they exercised their Agency. While enjoying the Safety of Town and a Respite from adventure.

See how this s&$% works? The point is, it ain’t good to be too definitive about this s$%&. Because the real point of Town Mode is to let players take small, distinct actions in ways that provide lots of different benefits to Empowerment, Gamefeel, Pacing, and Worldsense.

In other words, if you start arguing over whether developing a contact counts as Development or Acquiring a Resource or you turn this s$&% into checklists, you’re doing it wrong. And I get to slap you.

Development

First, in Town Mode, you give the players the chance to Develop their characters. Which comes in two flavors: mechanical and narrative. Mechanical growth is all about levels, equipment, special abilities, and other on-the-character-sheet crap. Narrative growth is about the character’s personality and behavior. The story parts of the character. In Town Mode, you let the players learn more about their characters and provide opportunities for character evolution and growth.

In D&D these days, Mechanical Development is mostly automatic. When the PCs undertake adventures, they gain experience. That leads — automatically — to their gaining levels. And getting new special abilities. And, along the way, they find plenty of new equipment too. Making Mechanical Development automatic and just another part of adventuring removes the Narrative Development component. And it also divorces Development from all the other benefits of Town Mode. This is why when you implement Town Mode, you’re going to stop this automatic level-up bulls$&% and you’re never again going to let the characters gain levels in the middle of an adventure.

Development’s obviously Empowering. I don’t have to explain that. But by making it part of the game and the world, you also connect it to the Gamefeel and the Worldsense. Something you can’t do if everyone does it at home.

Information

In Town Mode, you give the players plenty of chances to learn about the world, its inhabitants, and even the challenges they might face. The information can range from game-changingly useful — like Azatoth the Evil’s one weakness — to the merely interesting — like the details of the elf-dwarf compact that ended the Three Century War.

Characters do get lots of information during their adventures. Some adventures are all about uncovering information. But that information’s always necessarily focused. It either directly plays into the adventure’s challenges or provides the adventure’s backstory. That’s nice. Information like that is Empowering. But believe it or not, useless merely interesting information’s got to show up if the players are going to believe there’s a world beyond their own adventures. And Town Mode is the perfect place for useless details that enhance your campaign’s Worldsense.

Opportunities

In Town Mode, you offer the players the chance to undertake quests, adventures, scenarios, and sidequests. Basically, Town Mode’s where you set up the gameplay goals. The reason I call these Opportunities instead of Hooks is that the best setups are the ones that give the players a choice. That doesn’t mean you have to let them choose between a bunch of different adventures. But the best hooks are the ones the players feel like they discovered for themselves and feel like they can refuse.

A game needs goals. So Opportunities are an important part of the Gamefeel. But by setting up the goals in Town Mode, in the space between adventures, you also enhance the Worldsense. Especially if you can show how those goals affect the people and the world. And, if you make most goals feel like choices, you’re also Empowering the players.

Resources

In Town Mode, you let the players develop resources. That is, you let them bank useful things for later use. Now, the distinction between Development and Resources is a hazy one. Which is fine. Remember, you don’t want to waste your time drawing bright lines and classifying s%$&. Whether something’s a Resource or Development doesn’t matter. What matters is there’s a little of both in your game.

Resources are tools that might be useful later. Things the players can tap for some future payoff. Contacts, access to locations, access to services, favors owed? All those count as resources.

Resources are Empowering. But they require some strategic thinking. A player’s got to remember a resource exists, recognize when it’ll be useful, and tap it appropriately for a Resource to payoff. That means, they enhance the Gamefeel in ways that abilities and equipment on the character sheet just can’t.

Interaction

In Town Mode, you let the players interact with the people who share their characters’ world. And while that’s something that happens sometimes in Adventure Mode, Adventure Mode interactions are usually focused on the adventure at hand. It’s like how Information discovered in Adventure Mode is almost always related to the adventure itself.

Interaction in Town Mode need not tie into the players’ characters’ stories at all. In fact, it’s best if it doesn’t. Remember how Information that isn’t part of the game enhances Worldsense? It’s the same for Interaction. Interaction in Town Mode reveals a world beyond the game. At the same time, Town Mode makes such Interaction part of the game, thus Empowering the players and enhancing the campaign’s Gamefeel.

Agency

All the s$&% above is pretty concrete, right? Town Mode provides Character Development, Information, Opportunities for Adventure, and a chance to Bank Resources. Those are nice, tangible things. But Town Mode provides some pretty thematic, touchy-feely s$&% too. And one of those thematic touchy-feelies is Agency.

In Adventure Mode, the players don’t have a lot of freedom. Even if the adventure’s pretty open-ended and there are lots of ways to deal with every challenge, the characters are still working toward something and there are usually a lot of constraints on how they can achieve it. Town Mode doesn’t really have a goal, right? The game’s on pause. So the players get to decide what to do. What to pursue. They can Develop or they can Seek Information or they can Hunt for Opportunities for Adventure or whatever. And the specific payoffs — character abilities, favors from a contact, a clue to winning the next adventure — depend on the player’s choices.

Choose your goal? Get what you earn? That’s Agency right there.

That said, unfettered and unconstrained Agency isn’t the goal here. After all, if you let players do all their downtime s$&% away from the table, they have all the Agency they want. The problem is total Agency doesn’t feel Agency at all. If choices don’t matter, they aren’t choices. The goal is a sense of Agency that also increases the Gamefeel and Worldsense. And that’s why — as I’ll explain later — you’ll never, ever tell the players how long they’ve got in Town Mode. I know some GMs like to hand out Downtime Hours or tell the players, “you’ve got six days in Town; decide how you want to spend them.” That s$&% provides Agency at the expense of Gamefeel and Worldsense. In fact, it provides fake Agency at the expense of real Agency.

Safety

In Town Mode, you’ll make sure the players feel safe. Reasonably, practically safe.

When the game’s in Adventure Mode, the players know their characters are always in danger. At any given moment, some terrible thing can just f$&% everyone up. Which is what adventuring’s all about, right? Overcoming risks and dangers to win the day. From a gameplay standpoint though, that means every resource is valuable. And it means every choice is about survival and victory. Players can’t risk spending resources on anything that isn’t immediately useful. Anything that doesn’t help with the current problem’s a waste of time.

Town Mode’s the opposite. While Town Mode isn’t totally safe, the dangers and complications that arise are minor. They’re not life-and-death. At least, that’s how it should be. Some GMs never f$&%ing let up. And they’re wrecking their games. Town Mode should feel reasonably safe almost all the time.

Letting the players relax and let their guards down so they can spend resources on s$&% that doesn’t have an immediate, guaranteed payoff enhances the Gamefeel. It lets them experiment and make mistakes and do s$&% just because it seems like a fun idea.

Respite

Town Mode’s not just a place where you let the players play the game without the high stakes of a life-and-death struggle, it’s also where you actually let the players take a break from playing the game.

I said above that the game’s basically on pause in Town Mode, right? And I bet you’re expecting me to tell you how that’s not really true. To tell you that Town Mode’s just another part of the game. Well, it is. But also, it’s not. The game really is kind of on pause. And it needs to be. Why? Because Adventure Mode is exhausting. It’s tense and scary and dangerous. Town Mode lets the players relax and spend time together without the high stakes of an adventure around them. It lets them recover their energy for the next tense, scary, life-and-death adventure.

Sure, the void between sessions does that too. But not like Town Mode does. Because the players are still at the game table. They’re still together. They’re still in the world. In the game. But they get to take a break together. And that’s vital for campaign Pacing. This is why you should spend one session in Town Mode for every three in Adventure Mode whenever you can pull it off.

Context

In Town Mode, you show the players the world that exists beyond the game. The world that their adventures affect. While this is related to Interaction — which I talked about above — it’s not the same thing. Interaction requires the players to act. To speak to and respond to NPCs. Maybe even seek those NPCs out. In short, if the players don’t take an interest, there’s no Interaction.

Context arises from passive participation in Town Mode. The flavor text alone, for example, shows players the lives of the world’s people. The lives their actions are going to affect. Context is vital to Worldsense. It’s literally the window through which you show the players the world beyond the game. Whether they want to see it or not. And by making Town Mode part of the game, you also tie the Worldsense to the Gamefeel. Context isn’t something players can get from a map and a list of locations where they can take downtime actions.

To Town Mode or Not to Town Mode?

So, what have we learned? Let me take a deep breath…

We learned that Town Mode enhances TTRPG Empowerment, Gamefeel, Pacing, and Worldsense by providing in-game, at-table opportunities for players to Develop their Characters, Learn Information, Bank Resources, Discover Opportunities, and Interact with the World while enjoying a Sense of Agency and taking a Respite from Adventure Mode in a Safe Place that provides Context for their in-game Actions.

That said — and that was not easy to say, nor probably to read — that said, the real lesson’s not that Town Mode provides any of that s$&%. It’s that Town Mode — executed properly — inextricably ties all that s$&% together. Every action in Town Mode provides a bunch of that s$&%. And Town Mode connects s$&% the players want — like Development and Resources — to things they need but might never seek on their own — like Respite and Context.

Players don’t want to take breaks. But they have to. Otherwise, they get stressed and tired. And they have to take those breaks together. At the table. Otherwise, those breaks don’t benefit the game. Players need to know the world beyond the game exists, even if they’re not interested in interacting with it. Town Mode makes the players take breaks and forces them into the wider world. That s$&% makes your campaign feel like a real TTRPG instead of just a storytelling experience or an abstract gameplay challenge.

Remember the question I started with? It’s a dumb question. The question’s not why would you ever waste a session on Town Mode? The question is why would you ever skip Town Mode?

Let me end this lesson by telling you exactly when you’d skip Town Mode. Because, great as it is, the payoff isn’t always worth it. But before you ask, no, the fact that your players don’t seem to like Town Mode much is not a reason to skip it. It’s a reason to minimize it. Keep it down to half a session. But don’t cut it out. Town Mode’s doing s$&% the players are too dumb to know they need.

First, if you don’t game often enough or long enough, Town Mode ain’t worth it. If you only play once a month, or if your sessions are so short you only play the equivalent of one four-hour session per month, don’t waste sessions on Town Mode. Town Mode’s great, but not great enough to waste a month of play on.

Second, if you’re running a single adventure or adventure path and don’t expect it to last more than a few weeks — maybe six sessions tops — Town Mode ain’t worth it. I’d still try to fit it in once I got to about nine sessions of play, but I’d limit it to half a session at a pop.

Third — and I don’t even really want to say this because this is the sort of s$&% only expert-level GMs can assess — third, if your campaign already does all the s$&% I listed and keeps it all interrelated, you can skip Town Mode. That is, if you’ve got a campaign that doesn’t really do towns but still provides all the benefits of Town Mode somehow, you can skip Town Mode.

But that ain’t you. Not if you’re reading this. If you’re running any kind of ongoing campaign at all and you’re playing at least twice a month, you need Town Mode. No ifs. No ands. No giant-a$& butts.