Posted September 13, 2025 by Martin
On the narrative function of places and how to use environments to tell better stories
As the last rays of sunlight paint the tips of the trees with a fiery brush, you follow a winding path through the darkening forest. The crone’s directions were vague and difficult to make sense of, and more than once you felt that the crazy old hag must have sent you to get lost on purpose. But as you round a bend, past a large rock that matches her description of a broken wagon wheel, the trees thin and the path snakes up a hill.
And there, up on that hill, you spot your destination: the old windmill.
The townsfolk had only dared speak of the place in hushed voices, making the sign of the cross as they whispered about the unnerving sounds echoing through the valley on moonless nights. None had agreed to guide you there, and only the crone had been willing to give you directions, cryptic as her words turned out to be. You got the distinct impression that people were scared of this place.
Still, you are not prepared for what lies before you.
Bathed bloodred by the setting sun, the mill’s tattered sails flap in the breeze as storm clouds gather on the horizon. One of the windmill’s arms has snapped off entirely, the rotten wooden beam jutting from the ground at an odd angle. Is that a faint howl you hear, or is it just the sound of the wind rushing through the skeletal sails and the darkened, broken windows? From a distance, the structure’s masonry still seems intact, though whatever paint once covered its sides has long weathered away.
Darkness falls. Shaking off the sense of dread weighing you down, you push forward. The answers you seek lie inside.
The sound comes again, louder this time, and from behind you. Something’s in those trees. Closing in. You run towards the windmill, choosing to face whatever awaits in there rather than the unseen fanged terror hounding that forest.
Just then, in a window high up on the windmill, a sickly, yellow light flickers on.
We’ve talked about goals and characters, but unless you’re playing an extremely pared-down science fiction campaign, no story takes place in a vacuum. When adventure calls, the call is usually coming from some long-forgotten dungeon, some run-down dive bar, some galaxy far far away, and sometimes even from inside the house!
The point is, roleplaying stories take place in, well, places, and if you want to craft memorable locations that enhance your narratives, I have a few tips and insights to offer.
This may seem like an odd question, but hear me out: What is the point of having locations in a story? My philosophy is that any place you introduce in your narrative should always have a purpose for the story you’re trying to tell. I tend not to write places just because they’re cool, though having exciting locations to visit is ideal. With each village, dungeon, city, space station, planet, or other place, I try to accomplish one of three distinct narrative goals: ground characters, present obstacles, deepen the worldbuilding.
Every narrative character has a story, and those stories are almost always tied to one or more places. If you have a friend who grew up somewhere else, I guarantee you’ll have a completely new understanding of them after they’ve shown you around their home town. A good narrative location will provide context for a character or group of characters that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to communicate, grounding those characters and making them feel more believable and more engaging.
For one example, in Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon is a location that provides important context for the character of Han Solo. (“Place” can mean a lot more than just a stretch of land in a narrative context.) Han values his independence and his freedom, and even though he’s a little rough around the edges, his heart’s in the right place. The Millennium Falcon looks lived-in, doesn’t have a lot of flash, and could probably use a good deep-cleaning, but she’s one of the most capable smuggling ships in the galaxy and will not let her crew down. The ship also provides some context for Lando Calrissian, its former owner, and his relationship with Han.
Another great example of how a place can ground a character is Buffalo Bill’s home in The Silence of the Lambs. The scenes that take place in the serial killer’s basement pit where he keeps his victims before he murders them are chilling, but the whole house visibly oozes serial killer vibes. Bill’s character is reflected in the environment he inhabits, his cruelty, his methodology, his unhinged mental state. Starling’s showdown with Buffalo Bill perfectly uses the house as a backdrop to take us into the mind of a deranged killer.
When you are introducing a place, think about which characters are important to the location, consider how the place reflects these characters, and what aspects of their environment influence the people who live there.
Some locations are there to offer opportunities, like towns with quest givers, shops, and places to rest. More often, though, places present obstacles. Dungeons are a prime example of a place as an obstacle. I’m using the word “dungeon” here not in reference to an actual underground prison, but as shorthand for “a place where the party must overcome enemies, puzzles, and other challenges.” Narratively, a place as an obstacle is not just a location that contains obstacles, but one that presents a direct opposition to or a complication of the party’s goals.
Going back to Star Wars, the Death Star is an example of a location as a narrative obstacle. On top of being a scary, planet-destroying space station, the Death Star is also the primary threat to the protagonists’ goal of freeing the galaxy from the Empire’s oppression. This place contains a lot of obstacles and dangers, including a near endless supply of storm troopers, a tractor beam that prevents the Millennium Falcon from escaping, a deadly trash compactor, squadrons of TIE fighters, and even a boss-level villain in the form of Darth Vader.
While the Death Star is an obvious obstacle, you can also create places that hide their true nature. In H.P. Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow over Innsmouth, the seaside town of Innsmouth at first seems like nothing more threatening than a slightly run-down backwater village, but over the course of the narrative its true, malevolent nature gradually emerges. Locations that are hidden narrative obstacles are a good way to create suspense, and they’re especially effective in settings that rely heavily on themes of horror, suspicion, and mystery, but these places can also create memorable moments in any campaign.
It’s useful to weigh whether you want to immediately signal to your players that a place is an obstacle (and exactly what threats lurk there) or whether you’ll let them discover the danger they just walked into.
Worldbuilding is one of those terms that writers love to talk about because it sounds very smart and makes the act of writing feel just a little bit more impressive. We’re not just playing pretend, we’re building worlds! In practice, worldbuilding simply means providing narrative details that make your setting feel lived-in and believable. That can include things like backstories, customs, politics, and other flavorful elements sprinkled on top of your narrative to help bring your world alive. The less obvious your worldbuilding is, the better, and using locations to further your worldbuilding is an excellent way to show instead of tell.
In Mad Max: Fury Road, the story’s primary villain, the warlord Immortan Joe, rules over the Citadel. His stronghold is built into a massive rock formation that towers over the Wasteland, sitting on top of an aquifer that provides him and his War Boys with a limitless supply of water. He uses his control over the water to grow food, trading that food with other Wasteland fortresses for weapons and gasoline. Wastelanders gather in the shadow of the Citadel, desperate for the rare times when Immortan Joe rains water from the aquifer down on the masses below to keep them enthralled. It is a cruel, hostile place, where only the violent and the deranged are able to thrive. The movie doesn’t spend a lot of time at the Citadel, but it’s enough to give us an excellent understanding of the world this story takes place in.
Think of details you can add to a location to illustrate your narrative’s setting. If your party arrives at for example a new city, how does that city reflect its people’s traditions? How do the people there dress, how do they trade, how do they support each other, are there any unusual practices you can use to shine a light on different aspects of your world? Perhaps the party arrives in the middle of a yearly festival that’s rooted in the place’s history, or maybe there’s a statue or some other prominent piece of art that the people put up to mark a point in their village’s past.
A note on notes: Environmental storytelling in video games often happens via notes, logs, and audio recordings that are scattered throughout a location, and players can puzzle together the whole story when they collect all the pieces. This is fine for a computer game, but I don’t recommend this technique for a TTRPG. It’s not fun when a session grinds to a screeching halt while one person reads a journal entry out loud, and it’s even less enjoyable when there are several such stops. If your location must contain a musty old journal, my advice would be to limit it to one piece.
With any location I add to a narrative, I try to accomplish at least one of these goals. Ideally, you should aim to do at least two of these, but if you can figure out how a place can ground a character, present an interesting obstacle, and deepen your worldbuilding all at the same time, you should absolutely go for it.
Alright, so how do you actually write one of these things? The most common writing advice you’ll find is to start with the history of a place, but I actually like to work backwards. I start with what function I want a place to serve in my narrative, then compile a list of points of interest, populate the place with non-player characters, and finally figure out a backstory that ties it all together.
There will be a separate blog all about theme at some point, because it’s a pretty substantial part of good narrative writing. It’s also a more advanced topic, and we’re not going to worry too much about those right now. But when you’re writing locations, theme is incredibly important, so we might as well talk about it a little bit now.
Theme answers the question, “What is this about?” The Lord of the Rings is a story about friendship, sacrifice, and the corrupting influence of power. The narrative features elves and orcs and wizards and hobbits and talking trees and magical swords, but those aren’t what the story is about. Likewise, any place you introduce should be about something beyond just the stuff players can find there.
This is my usual starting point for locations: What narrative purpose do I need to meet at this point in the narrative, what kind of place could serve that purpose, and what is its theme? Let’s recall the narrative purposes of locations: ground characters, present obstacles, deepen worldbuilding. Suppose I have an adversary in my campaign who’s a shady viceroy, and I want to give his character some more context. Perhaps he has a secret, like an illegitimate child he’s hiding at a convent. That gives me a location: The Convent, which serves to contextualize the viceroy’s character. The Convent’s main theme would be “secrets,” because the viceroy is hiding a dark and embarrassing secret there. This is what that place is about.
Knowing the place’s purpose and theme, I can now start filling in more details about this location.
Every place should have three or more points of interest, which are basically sub-locations the players can visit and interact with. Like the place itself, points of interest should have some connection to the overall purpose and theme, but adding several points of interest also gives you an opportunity to serve secondary narrative purposes. They’re a great way to flesh out a place and give it more texture.
If your place’s primary purpose is to ground a character, for example, then points of interest can allow you to also introduce an interesting obstacle and/or deepen your worldbuilding at the same time.
In the above example, suitable points of interest for the Convent could be the Chapel, the Garden, the Dining Hall, a Gate House (of course the viceroy would want to keep some guards near the Convent to keep an eye on things), and maybe a Cliffside Grove. The Gate House represents an obstacle (the party may need to find a way past those guards), the Garden and the Dining Hall can deepen your worldbuilding by letting you show how the nuns go about their daily routine, while the Chapel and the Cliffside Grove could play a part in uncovering the viceroy’s secret. Maybe the Cliffside Grove isn’t immediately obvious and is only revealed to the players after they snoop around the place a bit.
At the same time as you’re laying out your points of interest, it also makes sense to plan what key characters will be at this location. These characters also should fit in with the place’s purpose and theme; the previous chapter, Allies and Adversaries, should give you an idea of how to put together characters that align well with those parameters.
These characters can be people your players will simply talk to, or they can be boss-type characters they will fight. Even if your location is abandoned, it might still be useful to consider whether there are any characters who might pop in, or maybe there could be remains of previous inhabitants that players could stumble upon (or trip over).
For our Convent, it would make sense to have a Mother Superior who is in charge of the place, and maybe a Captain of the Guard. A Groundskeeper wouldn’t be out of place, and then of course there’s the viceroy’s Heir. All of these people might have secrets they’re keeping, truths they’re afraid to confront, unsettled debts from their pasts that are haunting them.
Play around with it, and see how purpose and theme can help make your locations feel more engaging and memorable.
Finally, once everything else is in place, you can start sketching out a backstory for your place. This can be as detailed or as rough as you like, and I wouldn’t info dump a backstory on the players unless absolutely necessary. Show, don’t tell. The point of having a backstory ready isn’t to amaze and delight your players (though some backstories I’ve heard are delightfully amazing), it’s to be able to respond well when players go off the beaten path. If you know the lay of the land, it’ll be much easier for you to improvise.
For the Convent, maybe it used to be an old country estate that had fallen into disrepair until the church received a generous donation from the viceroy, allowing for the estate’s restoration and conversion into a place where nuns are sent to deepen their devotion to the faith. I might throw in a detail like the Groundskeeper is a distant descendant of the family that once owned the estate, and he secretly harbors a grudge against the nuns there. Maybe the viceroy’s support of the church isn’t well known, and the party discovers his financial involvement in the Convent after digging through documents they’ve stolen from the viceroy’s study, raising the question of “Why would the viceroy, who’s not known to be particularly spiritual, be spending all this money on a bunch of nuns? Something’s not adding up!”
In most campaigns, there’s one place in particular that’s near and dear to the players’ hearts, and that is their home base. Home can be a castle they’re fixing up, a safehouse in the Redmond Barrens, their own spaceship (legitimate salvage, they’ll have you know), a pocket dimension of their own, or if they’re incredibly lucky, their very own moon. Whatever shape Home Base might take, there are a number of really good reasons why your campaign should include one. Maybe they start with it, maybe they have to conquer or commandeer it, but either way, eventually your players claim a place to call home.
For me, the best argument for Home Base is that it takes the three main narrative purposes of places and turns them on their heads, focusing on the players. Now you have a place that grounds your player characters and gives them context, somewhere that provides interesting opportunities for growth, and a way for the players to participate in the worldbuilding.
Grounding Player Characters: At their Home Base, players should have an opportunity to expand on the personalities of their characters. Maybe the Fighter would like to plant an herb garden inside the castle walls where she plans to grow some of the spices of her homelands, or the decker uses some of his earnings from the latest run to kit out a sick multimedia theater for the whole crew, or the captain obsesses over restocking the ship’s supply of coffee each time they make port and is always looking to upgrade the coffeemaker, and so on. Use Home Base to create space for your players to express their characters.
Opportunities for Growth: Kind of the opposite of an obstacle, Home Base can serve as another means of character progression. Getting new and better gear for their characters is a major motivation at many tables, but being able to customize and kit out their own place can be just as compelling, especially if it comes with actual mechanical gameplay advantages. A hermetic mage might want to upgrade his library with all the greatest grimoires of the realm to be able to craft more potent spells, or a street samurai could invest in a high-end workshop to do a little gunsmithing for the team. If you can figure out a way how Home Base can give your players an edge, they will grow attached to the place and more engaged with the narrative that surrounds their home.
Worldbuilding: How their Home Base gets integrated into the world around them offers players a fantastic opportunity to help shape and influence the overall setting. If their home is for example a military garrison on the planet Arrakis, maybe the players will decide to primarily use slave labor to maintain their stronghold and hoard as much Spice as possible, or maybe they gain the goodwill of the surrounding desert villages by employing local workers at fair wages in pursuit of establishing desert power. Giving players the sense that their characters are having an impact makes a lot of campaigns that much more enjoyable.
Much like any other location, the recommendations about purpose and theme, points of interest, key characters, and backstory also apply when writing a Home Base. Players will probably want to have some input in the location’s theme, and they will most likely have suggestions on different points of interest and the key characters they want to bring onboard. It’s useful to offer guidance in those conversations and to establish clear decision-space constraints (“Installing all those minigun turrets around the perimeter of your safehouse is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don’t want in a place to lay low at…”) while still encouraging the party to let their imaginations run wild.
One final word of caution regarding Home Base: Be aware of a home that is too safe. If players have a safe place to ride out any storm, that can undermine any sense of urgency and quickly take the wind out of your narrative’s sails. Find ways to keep your players out in the world as much as possible, and it’s also perfectly okay to force players to defend their home every once in a while.
Here’s an example of a narrative location for a Fallout TTRPG campaign I’m working on right now: the town of Pickle, situated in the region formerly known as Texas.
Purpose and Theme: Pickle is the town where the players begin their adventure. The core themes of this campaign will be “War never changes,” and “Live together, die alone.” I want Pickle to be reflective of the survival theme, so it’ll be a town that is barely hanging on and where survival is a daily struggle.
Points of Interest: As survivalists, the people of Pickle will have figured out some ways to meet the challenges of the Gulf region where the campaign takes place. It makes sense for them to have a large Greenhouse Farm where they grow the town’s namesake crop, maybe using scavenged pre-war equipment to maximize their yields. That means they’ll have a modest Village Market where traders come to barter, as well as a Saloon that serves all kinds of fermented pickle spirits. Since they have something worth defending, there’ll be a Watchtower from where guards keep a lookout day and night. I also want there to be a Mayor’s Mansion, which is not an actual mansion but a pre-war recreational vehicle that has been converted into the nicest home in town. The town also has a Library where they keep a selection of pre-war books on survival.
Key Characters: I want to start the campaign on a lighthearted note, and I think it would be funny if the survivalist people of Pickle tried to keep the all-American tradition of democracy alive by having a mayoral election every four years, which has been won for the past 18 terms by mayor Dick Durkins, who died about 69 years ago but keeps winning elections anyway because tradition is really important to these people. Luckily, his Mr. Handy robot butler, Leicester, has been helping the mayor carry out his office and doing an admirable job. The farm will be run by Missy McGraw, an ornery old farmer who has forgotten more about working the land than most people will ever learn and who is married to Muriel McGraw, the town’s librarian and schoolteacher. A ghoul named Reggie and his brahmin Old Hank serve as the town’s trading caravan, making runs to the nearby towns of Beaumont and Fletcher. Finally, the head of the town militia is Earl Robbins, who spends most of his days up on the Watchtower keeping guard.
Backstory: Pickle was founded about 40 years after the Great War when the main vehicle of a group of survivalists traveling south broke down. The people decided this was as good a place as any to try to put down roots, and so they gradually started setting up camp. They brought with them the books still kept in Pickle’s library today, and using the knowledge contained in those volumes, the survivalists managed to repair industrial equipment scavenged from the nearby ruins of Dallas. When they succeeded in constructing a well that could tap into clean groundwater, they started farming in earnest, and eventually they were able to sustain a small population. Each planting season brings new challenges to Pickle’s survival, and the townspeople have learned that it is only by working together that they stand any chance of making it through the day. This has made Pickle a tightly knit community that values communal welfare, solidarity, and placing the needs of the group above the needs of the individual.
We’ve established the narrative functions of places, and you should now have some easy methods to sketch out interesting locations for your tabletop narratives. You’re now familiar with some of the ins and outs of providing players with a narrative location that can serve as their home base.
Next time, we’ll talk about how to use Factions to spice up a narrative, and we’ll go over some of the things to consider when you’re asking your players to pick a side.
Until next time!