d20 City Building...

I love cities and site related campaigns. Right now I'm in the process of delving into my book collection for ideas and inspiration for a Mutants and Masterminds game that I plan to run on the pbp boards.

Anyways, what other d20 books can help in fleshing out a city or help serve as inspiration for building a city?

Medieval / Fantasy
Bluffside: City on the Edge
Cityscape
DMG I: Pgs. 98 - 102 and 129 - 147
DMG II: Pgs. 81 - 108 and 119 - 152
Freeport: City of Adventure*
Legends & Lairs: Cityworks
Ptolus: City by the Spire
Sharn: The City of Towers
The City of Stormreach
World of Warcraft RPG: Pgs. 377 - 394


Contemporary / Modern Day / Futuristic / Super Hero
d20 Modern: Urban Arcana: Pgs. 165 - 168
Mutants and Masterminds: Freedom City*


Other
???

*To simplify this list I will not include EVERY book that was produced for these settings.

Please note, I did not place the Epic Level Handbook on this list because UNION IS NOT INSPIRING.

Is the Eberron Stormreach book any good?

Hi,

For my city Parsantium, I've used many of the books you've listed plus Cityscape (WotC), CityWorks (Fantasy Flight), Bluffside (Thunderhead Games) and the Pirate's Guide to Freeport (Green Ronin).

Hope this helps


Richard

I'm not sure how Stormreach is (since I never bought any Eberron Products beyond the campaign book), but never the less, thanks for mentioning it.


I totally forgot about Cityscape.. I'm pretty sure I have it somewhere since I do remember reading that book often.. How is Cityworks?

Relique du Madde said:

I totally forgot about Cityscape.. I'm pretty sure I have it somewhere since I do remember reading that book often.. How is Cityworks?

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Cityworks is really good, it's written by Mike Mearls, BTW.

I would also recommend looking at Necro's Bard's Gate and City State of the Invincible Overlord. It's got some great ideas in it.

There are also a bunch of great PDFs by our very own EN Publishing you should consider as well. Powers that Be: City Council, as well as the series of EN Guilds PDFs: Adventurer's Guild, Artisan's Guild, Banking Guild, Merchant Guild, Monster Hunter's Guild, Safeharbor Guild and Thieve's Guild.

The very old Cities by Midkemia Press was very much for any system, mostly a huge number of rather nifty encounter tables. Goes for about $40 used these days.

City Works is indeed a good book too.

The Auld Grump

The Medieval Europe: A Magical Medieval Society book for Expeditious Retreat Games has a chapter on building up a city from the political factions standpoint. I think it's even available as a free download.

I haven't read them, but Atlas Games has Seven Cities, and Green Ronin has Thieves World which I think largely revolves around a city, and then there is the City State of the Invincible Warlord whose title certainly seems city-related.

Yair said:

The Medieval Europe: A Magical Medieval Society book for Expeditious Retreat Games has a chapter on building up a city from the political factions standpoint. I think it's even available as a free download.

I haven't read them, but Atlas Games has Seven Cities, and Green Ronin has Thieves World which I think largely revolves around a city, and then there is the City State of the Invincible Warlord whose title certainly seems city-related.

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These are three great products.

I'd recommend Medieval Europe to anyone interested in the topic.

Seven Cities has some interesting ideas, but its somewhat misnamed. Technically it should be called Seven Settlements as some of the seven are villages, towns etc.

Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary is a better bet than Thieves World, as it concentrates on the city itself.

For individual locations in a city, I like d20 Modern's Critical Locations. There are lots of encounter ideas, although the vast majority of locations detailed are probably only useful in a modern game.

Oh, and the web enhancement to the DMG has some useful notes on city design, although personally I prefer Cityscape's approach.

I personally get a lot of mileage out of the DMG web enhancement: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20030719a

Denizens of Freeport (many, many interesting PCs)
Falcon's Hollow stuff from Paizo modules (Kobold King and Carnival of Tears)
Burnt Offerings (Rise of the Runelords 1) has a fully worked up Sandpoint
Curse of the Crimson Throne is entirely set in Korvosa, which looks good, based on the first part of the adventure path
DMG2 has Saltmarsh, which isn't that great