Settlement Template... One Place, Three Depths

Every campaign map has settlements the party passed through once and never returned to. Not because they weren't interesting. Because nothing was written down.

This is built around how settlements actually arrive. The party turns left when you planned right, and now there's a village that needs a name, a smell coming off the market, one detail everyone at the table will remember.

Three layers, three depths of involvement. Use as much as the place earns.

10 Seconds - is what you catch at the gate: the name, the size, the one defining trait, what they see and smell walking in. Scribble it while it's still true, so the place exists somewhere other than your memory.

10 Minutes - is the pass before they go back: who runs it, which factions pull at it, the faces worth meeting, and the one tension simmering underneath.

10 Sessions - is for the places that stop being scenery: how it came to be, its districts and who holds them, the factions rising and slipping, and a Change Ledger for what shifts between visits.

Six pages. A How This Works page, a full worksheet for each layer, and a print-and-cut sheet of four table cards for capture in the moment.

Print from page 2. The cover is dark by design and made for the screen, so it won't eat your ink.

Part of a set of table tools built on one idea: the things you invent mid-session are worth keeping, and almost none of them survive. Each one takes a single thing a game throws at you (a person, a place, a hook) and gives it three depths, so you write down only as much as the thing has earned. The NPC Template. The Settlement Template (this one). The Quest Hook Template. Same spine, three different problems.

This product's interior text was written with AI assistance. The structure, design, and method are the author's own.