‘The Towninator’, as its creator Andreas Barbesgaard calls it, isn’t an ordinary DnD character sheet; it’s an in-depth storytelling tool that helps you craft a TTRPG village, town, or city. Barbesgaard, a 33-year-old board game designer from Denmark shared The Towninator documents on Reddit on October 20, and they’re currently available to download for free.
The Towninator consists of four character sheets – a core sheet and three additional ones to document the buildings, factions, and NPCs found in your area. You begin town creation by deciding on size. This then tells you how many dice to roll when generating stats for your urban landscape. Town stats include things like Wealth, Education, Culture, and Crime.
Each town will have a ‘specialty’ that gives it extra perks. An industrial city gets a plus one to its Production, Wealth, or Trade stats, while cultural cities can do the same for Culture, Education, Recreation, or Worship.
You can plan your town down to the minutest detail, as the sheet lets you specify factors like population size, terrain, and your town’s biggest imports and exports. Alternatively, you can roll at random and let the sheet do all the thinking for you. Barbesgaard has shared a full YouTube tutorial on how to use the sheet (which you can see below). He also tells Wargamer a more up-to-date tutorial is on its way in future.
Development doesn’t stop once you’ve filled in your sheet. The Towninator has a fame modifier that (in a very Gloomhaven fashion) alters how parties interact with the town depending on their reputation in that area. Key NPC relationships can change and additional buildings can pop up over time.
Barbesgaard shared on Reddit that the Towninator itself may develop further in future. “I have decided to re-release it on Kickstarter again to gain funds to upgrade the graphic aspect of the sheet”, he says online, “since it’s made with the best of my ability”. Barbesgaard says he’ll be looking to update the NPC section of the sheet in particular, as well as fix minor presentation issues like typos.
The Towninator can be downloaded free on this website. For more DnD generators, we’ve got you covered – here are our guides to encounter builders 5e, name generators, and sourcing one shots. You can also check out some of the best books and campaigns for pre-written DnD fun.