[All Patrons] Just Passing Through Extended Edition - Daleton (and the War in Daleton)

A village divided, its streets turned to battlegrounds, its shrine defiled, and its people trapped between warlords and wolves

From the road, the village looks more like a fortress than a home. The wooden palisade has been hastily reinforced with carts, beams, and sharpened stakes, giving it a jagged, uneven crown. Thin smoke curls into the sky, carrying the smell of ash and metal. Guards in mismatched gear patrol the walls, pausing often to peer into the distance, while the gate itself is half-blocked with timber and debris, leaving only a narrow passage inside. Rising above it all, a tall spire of copper gleams dully in the light, the only sign of reverence left in a place that now feels ruled by fear.

Daleton is a frontier settlement perched at the edge of the Dreary Wood and the foothills of the Copperspine Mountains. Built on copper mining, timber cutting, and farmland, it has long been a valuable hub of resources for the surrounding region. Its stout buildings and sturdy walls speak to a history of endurance, but that resilience is now tested to its breaking point.

The village is divided by civil war. Lady Eliza Cole, Daleton’s appointed mayor, has entrenched herself with a band of loyalists inside the shrine at the town’s center. Once respected for her leadership, Cole now rules through fear and betrayal, bolstered by the dark magic of Sorina Vale, an apprentice to the necromancer Malrik the Black Root. Cole uses Vale’s sorcery to raise the dead from the shrine’s cemetery, turning the holiest site in Daleton into both fortress and charnel house.

Opposing her is Captain Arin, Daleton’s constable and a hardened veteran of the kingdom’s crusades. Arin has gathered a company of crusader soldiers at an encampment outside the walls, preparing to overthrow Cole and restore order. He commands discipline and loyalty, but his vision of survival leans toward harsh military rule.

Circling on the outskirts is Roderic Vann, a ruthless bandit captain who exploits the chaos. His raiders burn fields, cut the roads, and ambush any reinforcements sent from the kingdom. Vann’s attacks have left Daleton starved of aid, keeping it isolated and vulnerable.

Sign up now for the Backerkit campaign and get TWO FREE Just Passing Through Digital Books (192 pages of content).

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/dmdave-publishing/just-passing-through-remastered

Lacking time to create content for your Tabletop RPG game?

Players love going "off mission", exploring side paths, or wandering around your sandbox. Creating everything you need for a village without making it feel too vague or undercooked is impossible. Those detours require detail. 

Even if you have useful tables, you don't want to bog down your sessions by rolling on random tables and taking notes just to answer simple questions like "where can we sleep?" or "where is the blacksmith?'

Published Adventures feel too restrictive or not useful?

Published adventures offer interesting locations but sometimes feel restrictive or too closely tied to a campaign. Perhaps they're written just to serve as a catalyst for the main adventure, making it feel less like a breathing, living village and more like a video game prompt.

Does homebrew take too long?

Homebrewing villages takes hours for what often amounts to only a few minutes of gametime interaction. Even if you use AI (yuck), you have to spend time generating those questions. Plus, you have to know what questions to ask the generator. 

And even then, those answers are probably relatively weak, lacking proper continuity!

The Solution: Drop-in Villages and Towns

Just Passing Through is the perfect toolbox for the Gamemaster who lacks adequate time to prepare. 

32 Detailed Settlements

These two books offer a total of 32 settlements, complete with:

• Read-aloud descriptions of each location

• Fully detailed maps

• A handful of interesting NPCs to serve as helpers, quest-givers, and even enemies

• Important locations in each settlement offering places to stay and purchase things, as well as mysterious locations to explore, which may lead to quests

• A rules-agnostic adventure that you can easily insert into your campaign

• Random encounter lists for day and night

• Additional adventure hooks

Lots of Bonus Content

The books will also contain:

• Historical information on Euro-medieval villages and towns if you want to strive for historical accuracy

• Lots and lots of random tables

• Information on how to easily adjust the settlements to better suit your campaign world

• Notes on rules system adaptation (5e, OSR, and so forth)

100% Rules Agnostic

These books are 100% rules agnostic. That means you can use any tabletop role-playing game ruleset you prefer—Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons (2014 or 2024), Old School Essentials, Mork Borg, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and so forth.

The content is drop-in, flexible, and endlessly reusable.

SIGN-UP NOW TO GET DIGITAL COPIES OF BOOKS 1 AND 2, FREE!