"We don't want to complicate the game for the players in a way that isn't fun for them, just because we think it is realistic" this is something I and the dm's I played with should have followed more

Always appreciate you reposting twitch videos on KZfaq!

"My husband cared much for feudality and tradition; for justice and honor. Look what that brought him." -The Dead Lady.

It truly was the greatest stream in this, or any age.

I was hoping the Dead lady would be in charge of construction. i love the idea of a horde of zombies in hardhats and safety wear on a building site just ruining everythings. Magnificent scenes I'd say.

Matt: “Is Carravaggio important? No!” Me: *Heart attack* Evil Matt strikes again.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge do have temporal power based in huge capital reserves and extensive property assets. The high administrative positions are often occupied by people of or linked to political parties, government, big business and the civil service. The greater Russell Group of universities (of which Oxbridge is the premier members) holds sway over government policy from both an in group perspective and as a key element in the economic success of Britain as a whole.

"There are two certainties in life. Death, and taxes." - Words of House Valetta I know it's a bit on the nose but I couldn't help myself :P Alternatively those words could be the threat used by the Revenant Men to those who refuse to pay their taxes.

"The Lords of Capital" sounds like something written by Karl Marx

Rather than Bureau, what about Chamber? That sounds more scholarly to me

Am I the only one that screams "College of Information Acquisition" "CIA"

I have been watching your videos since about middle of summer 2017. I found out about you when Matt Mercer mentioned you in one of his videos. Haven' t commented on one until now. This one has really given me some inspiration and help with building my world. I am really glad I chose to watch this one and even more glad you chose to make and post this video. I have used your videos to help me through alot of downs and what I refer to as "dead spots" in my creations. so wanted to say Thank you for what you share on here.

If the churches are controlled by the nobles, then surely there would be a sizable contingent in the population that would dislike the guilds, or outright hate them. There is no way the nobles would not leverage their influence with the populace to their advantage.

Matt, I seriously had to rewind and watch the beginning like 10 times because I laughed so hard at how you said assume, assOOOOOOOm lol. So great. Love listening to your vids while I work and you have given me a lot of courage and inspiration to work on my own ideas for games. Thank you!

This was absolutely fantastic. Great to have a document you can tinker away at and it grows arms and legs over time. Very cool. Loved watching you get caught by an idea and run away with it :D

This stream is a treasure trove of awsome campaign ideals. Thanks for doing this :D

"You're probably all just warlocks!" I'm gonna have to use that

Of all the wonderful videos Matt puts out, these worldbuilding streams are easily my favourite because A) They're long. B) We get to see Matt doing what he does really well. C) Worldbuilding is my favourite activity of all time.

I really liked the idea of zombie tax collectors: the undead are less likely to keep money for themselves because they don't care. Also the undead would be really good for repetitive, administrative tasks since they don't sleep and imo don't get bored. Their efficiency could be one of the reasons why they are tolerated.

Great Stream. Reaffirmed a lot of how I have created worlds. Suggestion for what the Dead Lady might control, the High Court. Where the Nobles and guild leaders go to settle legal disputes. "If we can't settle this here perhaps the Lady Lanora will see my side of things?" Perhaps her husband/family were the Lord Magistrates. Money comes from "gifts". The Death Knight FBI was its lawmen. Continue the idea of a mostly neutral/indifferent society and gives her something to do besides sit and ponder her husbands murder. And on another note. Let me see some 1s on those power rankings.

As someone who has written fantasy for many years (and never finished a story) I'd like to say that this video has helped me organize my worldbuilding in a way that actually makes it feel possible. Thank you.

I always love your stuff! The 3 hour version is better for me because of how much I enjoy your streams. High part for me - Dea(th)d Lady and Taxes.

The greatest stream of this or any age, some would say... Great job Matt, you continue to be an endless source of inspiration and fantastic ideas. Looking forward to the next stream

This was an incredible stream. Always a font of inspiration, Matt!

Thank's for posting your twitch stuff here, Also i totally plan to use the information you given here (perhaps even steal some of it) For my own campaign! The way you have handled this and wrote thing's down has really helped me develop as a Gm so thank you.

that map reminded me of Metroid Prime’s Chozo artifacts.

I cannot hear "House Vorona" without at the same time hearing "My Sharona"...

This is giving me so much fuel to work on my own campaign setting, thanks for the inspiration! Btw my idea for the Dead Lady would be to give her the orange district. I would say it is walled off and the gates rarely open for any other reason than to let her Death Knights and Revenue Men through, making it an obstacle for the players to get in (diplomacy or stealth) while also providing reasons as to why these undead aren't constantly terrorizing the rest of the city and why Church or the Navy haven't done anything about this blight on their home. I would also make it so that only the outer ring has been "zombiefied" and that little orange area towards the center of the city has remained untouched. This is where the Revenue Men are based and also where the survivors of the desecration (those in who were out of the district when this happened) band together. I can even imagine them having formed a small militia for their own protection and in the hope to one day reclaim the district for the living (perhaps led by a relative of Lenora, a nephew or even one of her children). I imagine these survivors, even the Revenue Men, have very strong emotions about this desecration. Not only are they suddenly living shoulder to shoulder with the undead (who outnumber them heavily), a lot of those undead were former co-workers, friends and family. There needs to be an extremely good reason as to why they haven't fled from the district right after this tragedy. Just some thoughts. Thanks again for the video :)

As someone who could spent an endless amount of time developing new characters but has a really hard time creating semi-realistic cities, towns, cultures and politics, this was extremely useful to me. Thank you.

Shame i couldn't watch live, but this was a really interesting video. Btw, my name is "Alvaro", I'm probably the founder of the oldest noble house. lmao

Hey Matt, about the guilds taking over the Docks from the Noble houses, you could say it was due to some sort of failure or incident of a Noble house that led the Prince to contract it out to The Fulcrum. Grear vid btw!

35:56 had a moment and a half where i introduced my players to a clan of evil barbarians named Morgoth. When i came up with the name i thought "Wow this sounds cool. Cant believe noone has used this name for something". The leader of the tribe was a dragonborn warrior, who i named Arkhan, with the same thought. Sometimes that extra google is worth it.

That’s such a cool idea to make Capitol essentially into one big game of Diplomacy! But also worked in very subtly so that the players have no idea!Super neat idea and innovative way to cause the world to feel alive. 👍🏻👍🏻

I've seen this map, and I didn't recognize it... That's just so brilliant... Thanks!

Wow wow wow. This is sooooo good, more content like this please! earned a new sub

53:20 "When verisimilitude fails, authenticity is no defence" I love it! We have a DM just now that we're trying to coach and he very much stands by the mantra of "... but that's what it would be like in real life" - suffice to say half the players have already "checked out" and the rest of us aren't far behind. I'll be quietly whispering this phrase in his ear at our next game. Thank you Matt! I have your pdf and can't wait for the hardcover copy!

Just got the the part where you discussed each district having its own currency. I also thought about it in my campaign and also came to the conclusion that it would be tedious. But one of the twists that I wanted to do was for the PCs to find that a suspect in a noblemans murder had a stash of a different factions currency in his house. And the way I went about it in the end was that they all used gold, silver and copper but each faction used their own emblems on the coinage. All the coins were the same value, they were just diffrently "printed", much like the 2 EUR coins here in the EU.

I was in the middle of catching up with this video on twitch, thanks for posting here so I can 2x speed the rest, lol.

Loved the livestream of this, but having condensed version is going to help on the rewatch for sure.

For the Guild running the docks, I think it would be cooler if the Guild was called The Scales (or something) and the Guildmaster's title was The Fulcrum. Great stuff, keep it coming!

this is Amazing stuff!!! I love it:)))

It's hilarious that you seemed to have accidentally named the wizard head of the university Prospero, when Prospero is also the name of one of the main characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest, _who also happened to be a wizard_ . It's doubly hilarious that almost immediately after deciding on this name, you talk about how common it is for writers of fantasy to name things that happen to be reflected in the real world. Amazing.

Oh man, so stoked for the stream. Capital is shaping up to be super cool. I don't understand how taxes work in a splintered city where the overall leadership has dissolved though. Like presumably the prince collected taxes from all of Capital, but now that he's gone, wouldn't the factions just collect taxes for themselves from the area/s they control? Why would they consent to the dead lady collecting taxes from their regions? Furthermore what does she do with the taxes once they're collected? There's no prince to give them to. Would she just hoard it all for herself, I can't see how much use a vampire would have for money. And I think it would make zero sense for her to collect it all from the other factions' areas, just to distribute it back to those factions afterwards. Essentially I guess it boils down to this: Who is she collecting taxes FOR?

"...On the stone was etched a galactic map, and a single word more ancient than the clans themselves: Hiigara. Our home." God it is my favorite thing when authors just stumble upon the same phonetic poetry.

I love the faltering nobles versus the ascendant guilds. I love how this has a Florence type feel to it. Can't wait for the characters to run afoul of these rivalries.

Rioja - Spanish Red Wine region

What about the "Chamber of Inquiry", or if you really want it to be CIA, you could do "Chamber of Inquiry and Acquisition" Edit: spelling of inquiry:)

You know Matt, Looking at this map, there would definitely be a race around the city annually, probably involving sprinting, swimming, and horsemanship.

The Dead Lady is the single most coolest-est idea I have ever heard!!! So much awesome!!! Ehrmagerd.... my mind is aflame with ideas.

I'm so excited about this video. Thanks!

I would be interested in seeing if Glen Cook's books have a sales uptick due to your videos. Keep up the good work!

As someone who cannot access Twitch at work due to bandwidth restrictions (yeah yeah yeah, so they say) I really love catching whatever I can of you man!

Hello Matt! Long time fan, first comment, so here goes: Shirome sounds awesome! About her name, Japanese pronunciation is a little funky- as you wrote it, it'd be pronounced "she-r'low-may" (may as in the month), which is kind of awesome because it could mean "White eyes" or "white of the eyes". The discrepancy in pronunciation could give a lot to her character (perhaps she chooses to change it to anger her parents, or her parents purposely changed pronunciation to be more Riojan). Also "The White Eye"...sounds like she has some under-the-table dealings going on. The pronunciation how you say it, "Shiromi", could mean..."white meat" or "white fish". Her parents would not be happy about that at all, and there's a tie in with the docks. BUT of course, it's all fantasy, so it ultimately doesn't matter :) (I'm an English teacher in Japan with some fluency, but by no means an authority on the language, just wanted to share!) Thanks Matt!

The live stream was awesome to watch, but thank you for the edited YT video.

Honestly watching this, and it’s simply complex and I love it.

I feel...overwhelmed.Not because of the video no.But because I have just read Matt Colville,the product.Stumbled upon a comment while rewatching an old video,looked it up and realised I had no idea.I felt "sad?" but I understood that was how it had to be.I found the silver lining under a review about saving private ryan and despite being too young and too uninvolved to care, I did.Mathew Colville,I know this comment is unimportant but, as a person and not a "product" you are an inspiration,and if you have to be a product then you are the most "human" I have seen, thank you for that.

Sounds like the book is going to have really cool rules to play with, excited.

So you're telling me that someone in this setting is literally in charge of Death and Taxes? Lol.

ive always loved these kind of world building videos, always loved doing it myself. Also really like Rioja sooooooooo

Hey Matt! Interesting tidbit. The University of Cambridge actually has quite a bit of power. There's been a long-running tension in the town of Cambridge for sometime between the city council and the university, mainly due to how much of the land in Cambridge the university colleges own. I.E. planning developments being shut down by the university, because they own the land the council want to use it. You get this to a much lesser extent with other newer universities around the country, but due to its age, Cambridge university has amassed quite a bit of wealth. Just thought you might be interested!

Omg thank you this helped me work so much.

Hey Matt, thanks for the awesome video. This is super helpful! However I want to warn you that in Shakespeare’s the Tempest there is a powerful wizard named Prospero and I’m concerned it might distract your players too much. I could be wrong, and hope I am, but I thought I’d make sure you knew.

After listening to the bit about the CIA analogue at the college, Student Information & Services popped into my head. I always thought that title could be sinister in the right context.

The "Hoard of the Louse" might be a fun Freudian slip to use when someone announces him, though. (@44:30) A cheeky bard heralding the entrance of an unpopular aristocrat in one of the guild halls, perhaps.

Church of Saint Ysabella the Unyielding. :)

Having your powerful wizard called Prospero is made even better by the Shakespeare reference.

Your hair is ON POINT this video Matt!

I imagine the nobility controls the mints, but the guilds have finagled in their own paper currency in recent years. Perhaps the exclusive medium of exchange among the guilds, but nonetheless prevalent in the sphere of trade.

That bit about the imperial university and the intelligence agency is just inspired

New video?? Can't wait to listen to this while I work.

It was surprisingly common in the medieval period--especially considering fantasy's everyone has weapons all the time approach to the period--for the wearing of weapons to be banned in cities except for knights & nobles (and sometimes the guard, though frequently even they were only allowed *sharp* weapons if they were manning the walls, being limited to maces when walking the beat), though usually there were exceptions that allowed people to *transport* weapons to or from their places of lodging, since they'd need them as soon as they were on the road and need a place to store them in the meantime. They just couldn't wear them on their belt and had to go directly from the gate to their inn while the guards eyed them suspiciously. Also knives generally didn't count because they were generally useful for eating and other common everyday tasks...but a more military-specific dagger like a rondel definitely would.

Each of the factions has their own currency BUT the merchant's guild has the best credit and is guaranteed to back their currency so it has become the default in most of the city. There are businesses that will accept no other.

The bureau of intelligence thing could also work kinda like Bletchley Park, with code breaking and cypher decription of communications. So having a pool of smart people to recruit is useful.

Ohh Ohh another idea for the Dead Lady. Not only did her husbands knights act as the "FBI" for Capital, but his former distract contols the only bridge(s) out of the city. They were the small but elite force used to keep land attacks at by and force enemies to deal with the Navy instead. This helps explain why none of the other factions in the city are to upset about a vampire running around. She's still doing her job if keep invaders out and sending out death knights when needed. I also love the idea of people only coming and going from the city via boat through the docks. No one in there right minds wants to travel through thr Dead ladys District. I could see a cool quest where the party needs to get out the city undetected and needs to travel through the Hunted Distrect and over the abandoned bridge.

A new take on "Death and Teaxes" with the Dead Lady. :D

Just a worldbuilding bit that Matt might find amusing. There's a setting I'm working on where the gods are all dead, and divine casters now get their power from Fonts housed in state churches. This results in a lot of changes to the way divine spells work. For example, Summon Planar Ally doesn't contact a god, it contacts someone on duty at the temple containing the Font, and instead of sending an elemental/celestial/fiend, you get a member of your church's Order Militant who happened to be on-call at the moment. Given that these are state churches, you also end up with some variants on class powers based on what the King demands of the church, and at least one of the nations uses Paladins as Tax Collectors, because it's obvious when they break their oaths, and that variant gets "Detect tax evasion" instead of Divine Sense. (They can also touch an item as an action and determine its value in GP. Or more specifically, they can determine how much tax needs to be paid on the item. If it's already been paid then the power doesn't work.) The end result is that Clerics of that nation can cast "Summon Tax Collector".

I don't know if you read these comments, but I have some suggestions for the dead lady. First, many of these old European towns that you are basing Capital off of have large catacombs, for storing the countless dead from plague and whatnot. It would be cool if these catacombs were the 'undead highway' for the death knights, allowing them to conduct special ops in secret. Also, I don't know if a large metropolitan area would jive with having a large portion of the city go undeveloped without reason (wouldn't having a bunch of ghosts in a part of your town be problematic?) So I propose that the dead lady should be granted the title of Marquess. Acting as a march for the prince, her job is to act as a buffer from any raids of various mercenaries and condottiere groups. Undead are cheaper to maintain than walls and guards, no?

"We don't want to complicate the game for the players in a way that isn't fun for them just because we think its realistic." Always excellent advice. Also I'd like to suggest "The Commonroom" as a scholarly-yet-sinister name for an intelligence agency.

Oh dang, I left right before you mentioning The Dead Lady! Did everyone in the stream really forget about her? Because dude, she is dope as fuuuuuuuck.

The Death Knight FBI section gave me chills.

Wow, loved the stream, wish I could join th enext one! :)

I love that there's a tragically doomed undead lady in this one. Builds off of one of the plot hooks you developed for that common world you created onstream some eons ago. No creative thought goes wasted, it just gets recycled!

I freaking love this video so much Édit: def stealing the dead lady

I thought he came up with the rioja name because he just loved the wine so much

Your conflict you describe between the guilds and the nobles reminds me of the Medici.

Peter the Great of Russia organized his government into Colleges and the term for his secret police was the Third Section (likely where Star Trek got Section 31). It was the Third Section of whatever college it belonged to but I forget the name of the college.

Great Steam -- very helpful as I'm currently working on my own world for a new campaign. Not sure if this is a good idea, but I wonder if the Navy's power in someway would come from official diplomacy -they are the face of Capital to the outside world. This could be a conflict with the university that focus on intelligence gathering. One is official diplomatic relations and the other is clandestine operations, which can compliment, but probably conflict now that there is not a prince to direct and coordinate.

having watched it, i find it funny that him and i had similar ideas on how to do a neutral faction.

I dont understand how anyone can dislike this.

Hiigara, like the race from the Homeworld games? (if a reference, totally awesome)

I'm imagining the Docks District being controlled by young upstarts because they hired some druids or wizards with Move Earth. The old (noble owned) harbor got filled in, and the upstarts own the land they created. It's a bigger, better harbor now, and the old noble warehouses are sinking into the mud and overrun by wererats.

I spend my dnd time watching these videos rarther than actually prepping for my players

Matt, just a thought here. Why not move the spy network to the finance district, has strong love/hate ties to a thieves guild, trades in secrets and make the university all about training adventurers and sponsoring dungeon explorations. The university obtains power by selling their powerful artifacts or hoarding them. Make the university a guild, or circle of Mages that is generally in conflict with the nobles, but especially with the clerics and their school of thought.

The Dead Lady would be an awesome undying one warlock patron

I sympathize with the nobles more than the guilds, guess im a bad guy.

This really reminds me of the stream to make Far Verona.

I would keep the different currencies for the different districts but keep a universal currency that is also being used by the new guilds. It would be the old system versus the new system and the new system being "we are one people, one currency"..... and of course the old guard would have to begrudgingly take the new currency, but they would give you only 90cents to the dollar. So if you have their currency you get a discount. Players can track their wealth in the universal currency, while treating house currency as something like gemstones. You could then assign different values to the house currencies depending on how their power raises and falls throughout the play.

Look at that clean cut look Mr Collville has going on lol.

Amazing stream!

You could call the office of operations something similar to “Human Resources” or the Office of Resources. Sounds like they could be like a Librarian or a clerk of some kind. You wouldn’t think that the person who orders office supplies knows the biggest secrets in the kingdom.