RangerWickett
Legend
I've published several adventures that happen in cities. It's really just a slight change in how you think about encounters. The advice I got forever ago was "narrow-wide-narrow."
Start the plot at a specific location with a specific thing that points to a threat that must be dealt with. That's a narrow starting point.
Have a clear location and encounter in mind for the climax. That's the narrow end point.
But in the middle, set up various NPCs and locations that can advance the PCs' efforts to go from that starting point to the end point. Like if the adventure starts with strange extraplanar creatures appearing at a festival, and you want it to end with the party confronting the lead monster as it tries to open a portal in the sewers, then think of what people would be able to give the PCs information to track down that monster, and think of what places they could investigate to get clues about the nature of that monster and to learn why it's doing what it's doing.
Or if the adventure starts with a woman being murdered at a foreign embassy because she was trying to steal evidence about a conspiracy, and you want the climax to involve the party locating the lead conspirator at his manor, then figure out who else is involved in the conspiracy, who was helping cover it up, who sent the murdered woman to the embassy in the first place, who might be willing to rat out their allies, and who are some people who might also be baddies, but who could ally with the party because taking out the conspiracy would make it easier for them to do their own bad stuff.
One of the great things about a city adventure is that if the PCs have a clever idea that you didn't think of, you can probably take one of your pre-planned encounters and tweak it to match their idea. So like, if you intended for the party to have to parlay with bandits when they go looking for the murdered woman's accomplices in the woods outside town, but the players instead have the idea that they'll create a honey pot to lure out those accomplices, you could just take the stats you had for that one encounter and use them in another at whatever location the players set their ambush.
Start the plot at a specific location with a specific thing that points to a threat that must be dealt with. That's a narrow starting point.
Have a clear location and encounter in mind for the climax. That's the narrow end point.
But in the middle, set up various NPCs and locations that can advance the PCs' efforts to go from that starting point to the end point. Like if the adventure starts with strange extraplanar creatures appearing at a festival, and you want it to end with the party confronting the lead monster as it tries to open a portal in the sewers, then think of what people would be able to give the PCs information to track down that monster, and think of what places they could investigate to get clues about the nature of that monster and to learn why it's doing what it's doing.
Or if the adventure starts with a woman being murdered at a foreign embassy because she was trying to steal evidence about a conspiracy, and you want the climax to involve the party locating the lead conspirator at his manor, then figure out who else is involved in the conspiracy, who was helping cover it up, who sent the murdered woman to the embassy in the first place, who might be willing to rat out their allies, and who are some people who might also be baddies, but who could ally with the party because taking out the conspiracy would make it easier for them to do their own bad stuff.
One of the great things about a city adventure is that if the PCs have a clever idea that you didn't think of, you can probably take one of your pre-planned encounters and tweak it to match their idea. So like, if you intended for the party to have to parlay with bandits when they go looking for the murdered woman's accomplices in the woods outside town, but the players instead have the idea that they'll create a honey pot to lure out those accomplices, you could just take the stats you had for that one encounter and use them in another at whatever location the players set their ambush.
