How do you deal with towns?

The first town I introduced to my campaign world, I made the whole thing.  Every shop, building, and structure.  It took a lot of time, was a huge map, and my group barely used it.  All in all, it was a waste of time. Towns 2 and 3 were just taverns.  When the PCs came to town, I dropped them in the tavern and the NPCs showed up there to hawk their wares or to talk about recent events.  The taverns seem to work better than the town maps, but I am wondering if there is a better way. What do you guys do?

Personally, I use the tavern map and just have my players use imaginations for when they are out and about. If the option for having players on separate maps ever happens, I might make different maps for different shops and such.

I just use a city map of wherever they're at, with numbers for the important buildings like shops, etc...so you're not taking the time to make each building you've just got like little squares on the full map that represent buildings.

@Chris - I would go for an in-between option. In the campaign I've recently started, the PCs are based out of a small village. There are only 20 buildings, but they're all potentially useful to the players in some way. Sure, some locations will be used by the players more than others. For example, they'll spend a lot more time at the Inn than they will the Tailor's Shop. But it feels like a community and can provide all reasonable material needs that the PCs are likely to face. Even this middle-of-the-road option still took me quite a bit of time to put together, but I think it will be worth it. The players have already been back and forth across the village a couple of times to talk to people, buy supplies, etc. and I fully expect them to base out of there for a long time to come.

Expanding the question,,,how do you  deal with a city? Use a map and mark locations on it, then cut away to a building (can use same one for different shops...really only need one shop, one tavern, and any special buildings...you can do keeps out of nothing but square rooms and halls, can do the same with mansion). When I did a battle on a huge city's streets I made maybe 4 buildings wide area and copy and pasted from a dozen different structures and stretched sizes and such. Then I used the NPC's to control the movement of the players a bit, any map would have it's edges though. That was a small section of the full city map, but it was pretty effective. Really what you aim for is overhead snapshots of important places where action will take place. Sometimes your players will always want to visit a temple, so it helps to know them, There are a lot of premade places, like cottages out there. Try to have a fallback, like a nondescript building and paint the rest of it with words.

That's pretty much how I did cities when I was using battlemats and minis, and I will use a similar approach with R20 when the time comes. Pre-make building layouts of any important locations you are certain the PCs will visit. Otherwise, just use generic shop layouts. There's also a lot of city market stall graphics out there that you could just plop down on a city street map. To save game time by sparing the players from blindly wandering around a new city, I will place a map merchant stall near the city gate. This guy does good business selling overland maps to people leaving the city, but he also sells keyed maps of the city to newcomers. These maps detail all the major points of interest in the city and the players are sure to buy one. Now they have an idea of where to go to find whatever it is they're looking for and you can just hop to that location map which you built ahead of time or just use a generic location.

I think it depends on whether you're doing homebrew or premade. Premades generally have maps of any locations you need and in Pathfinder even without a premade adventure, or on TOP of the premade adventure there are info books on different cities you can use to provide info on locations, random encounters, local personalities, ect. But even with this premade stuff, they may have this whole city, but every house isn't marked out so you can throw in some original stuff of your own. If you're doing a homebrew, it depends on your story and how you're using the world. Sometimes the whole story will be based on a city so having a detailed city would be important because there would be quests in the sewers, the crypts, in someone's house, the castle. It would be important to know what area is what kind of location in the city, slums, market, noble quarter. But this is only if you're running a city-based campaign. Or even with a town-based campaign where everything's based out of one location to nearby ruins or other things but always returning to one town... If your homebrew instead is supposed to have a vast world, different countries and politics, the location centric approach is best with descriptions of anyplace where there won't be any events of import. If it's a journey to a central location, having a generic overview of the sections of the city and what can be expected there (eg Slums: poor people, taverns, pawn shops, tiny apartments, narrow streets; Market: Wide square filled with stalls one day a week, mid-class inns and taverns, eateries, craftsman shops/home combos.) You don't need every street, but a general overview of what is there, what can be found there and then additional notes of specific things players ask for that you put there. With a homebrew, it might just be best to keep it general and then build and elaborate WITH your players after making a general overview to start.

Big cities, towns, and even villages are just a really cool picture I find somewhere on the net to showcase the general feel of an area. Spook much easier that way.

Honestly, I just describe it to my players, verbally, and let them go wherever they want.  If I need a battle map, I build a map suitably large enough to encompass the epicenter and the surrounding area to give my players plenty of room to maneuver.  I don't worry about building out the whole town (or the whole city); I just build what I need to frame the encounter.

The picture below is an example of what I prefer to use for town scenes. Helps set the mood better for ad hoc roleplaying way more than a map.

I use a town map keying only areas of importance for the campaign. The only interior map is usually the inn or tavern. Everthing else is handled in the narative style.

Ditto on what Jonathan the Black said. &nbsp;Unless there's combat, I think it's probably easier to have a nice picture like he posted as the tabletop image for those scenes. &nbsp;It allows the GM to relay a better impression of what the setting looks and feels like, and it speeds along the prep time for a game. If however there is combat, or the locations of buildings are somehow important to the dialogue, then there are a few options. &nbsp;For a really huge city it might take a long time to draw it out using Roll20's tools, so you might consider using graph paper and sketching/drawing the city by hand, scanning it in to your computer as a grayscale jpg (to save on file size), and then uploading it to the table top map. &nbsp;This option is sort of dependant on how comfortable you are with drawing and scanning. Another option is to use a premade town map, or a assemble a bunch of map tiles. &nbsp;Roll20 provides access to some free ones from RPGMapShare. &nbsp;Plus (at the risk of plugging myself) there is a newish Premium Map Set on the Roll20 marketplace called Rustic Village, which includes backgrounds, buildings, and roads specifically for creating villages and towns. &nbsp;There are also several premade maps included with it for GMs that want to cut down on lag/load times or just want a quick and easy city map to use. &nbsp;<a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/100/rustic-village" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/100/rustic-village</a>

Ditto what Jonathan the Black said. A simple scene of a town is pretty easy at conveying the feel and mood of the city.