Best Fantasy City Supplement For Sandbox Play

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I love Ptolus and have used it since 2006. It just includes detail rather than generators, though.

I also used the systemless Pirate's Guide to Freeport for one fork of my campaign for a number of years and find it very good. Again, no real generators, but it has the right balance for me of detail and blank space, as does Ptolus.

Kolb's Oz presents the Magical Land of Oz as an urban point crawl.

For a highly magical city, Skerples' Magical Industrial Revolution is full of generators, for all sorts of wild stuff. If you were looking for an Ankh-Morpork type city that the player characters could make their fortune in while trying to prevent multiple apocalypses caused by runaway magical innovation, it's your book.

It hasn't been mentioned yet, but I find Vornheim, which does include lots of random generators, to be pretty overhyped. It's thin, in every sense, and leans hard on the edgelord stuff, but doesn't really have much to recommend it as a city book, IMO.

And if you have the Shadowdark corebook (I think you do), I suspect you could build and run a city extremely well off of its generators.

If I were starting a new urban campaign today, it'd probably be Magical Industrial Revolution or yet another Ptolus campaign (there's enough in Ptolus to run at least three distinct campaign styles before you started repeating campaign themes).

 

[Parmandur]

The 5E/Cypher version is in print now, so it's cheaper than the aftermarket for the 3E version.

So, I am given to understand that Ptolus is based on Monte Cook's office 3E campaign: how does that translate in the 5E version?

 

[R_J_K75]

The 5E/Cypher version is in print now, so it's cheaper than the aftermarket for the 3E version.

On Monte Cook Games the print books for 5E and Cypher are ~$150 ea, not too bad for the size of the book. Or you can get the pdfs for both systems together for $60, again not bad for what you get, but still might be a little pricey for some people. Even some of the 3.x ones on ebay are pretty reasonably priced, but then again condition is sometimes suspect regardless of what the listing says. I bought the giant vinyl map for 3E but sold it, wish I'd kept it.

 

[R_J_K75]

So, I am given to understand that Ptolus is based on Monte Cook's office 3E campaign: how does that translate in the 5E version?

Yes, it was Cooks 3E campaign for the office. As far as I recall its mostly mechanical updates based on 5E but I believe the majority of edition neutral content is the same. I can't tell you what changed though as I haven't read enough to compare the two, its huge somewhere around 700-800 pages, you could beat a home invader with it if you needed

 

[R_J_K75]

If I were starting a new urban campaign today, it'd probably be Magical Industrial Revolution

Not quite the same but I have the Zobeck Gazetteer by Kobold Press and it was a cool concept. I bought it 2018-2019 because I was looking for some clockwork creatures for a Waterdeep campaign. and came across it. I read a bit of it, took what I needed and then put it on my bookshelf. I have yet to find a reason to finish reading it. Bad habit I've fallen into last few years, I have trouble reading cover to cover these days.

https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/?s=Zobeck&post_type=product

 

[Reynard]

For a highly magical city, Skerples' Magical Industrial Revolution is full of generators, for all sorts of wild stuff. If you were looking for an Ankh-Morpork type city that the player characters could make their fortune in while trying to prevent multiple apocalypses caused by runaway magical innovation, it's your book.

Oh. This sounds interesting.

And if you have the Shadowdark corebook (I think you do), I suspect you could build and run a city extremely well off of its generators.

I do, and it is on the short list.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

DCC Lankhmar springs to mind. It's filled with hooks and detail-generating tables. The carousing rules alone could spin up countless adventures.

 

[TheSword]

There are three very good city books for WFRP. By cubicle 7 and available on pdf.

Altdorf: A large London analogous city.

Middenheim: A city perched on top of a mountain.

Salzenmund: An inland port city built on hills around a lake.

All three have tons of interesting characters with solid hooks written for them, and good location descriptions for the several areas in each of the wards of the city. Very solid city books and easily adaptable to 5e.

There’s also the Ubersreik Adventures series of books by Cubicle 7. A grand total of 16 adventures set in and around the City of Ubersreik. With a starter set that includes a very good gazetteer of the city and several mini adventures/hooks.

I started a city based campaign set there last month.

Spoiler: Ubersreik Adventures Spoilers

Here are some summaries of the adventures in those books…

Slaughter at Spittalfield - PCs are trapped in a tenement by a cordon sanitaire because a vampire is spreading a contagious blood disease.

Bait and Witch - Two bounty hunters try to catch a rogue witch hunter by setting up a trap - using the PCs as bait.

Deadly Dispatch - PCs receive a delivery of prescribed necromantic components and the necromancer they were intended for wants them back. He’ll raise half the city to get hold of them so he can animate a dead hero from a city shrine.

Heart of Glass - A guard in a watch tower is killed and the party need to find out how?

Double Trouble - A noble families manor has been infiltrated by a murderer and servants are going missing one by one.

The Blessings that Drew Blood - Priests are being murdered over the city - can the PCs work out the pattern before more die.

No Strings Attached - A cursed cobbler who is haunted by three demonic puppets arrived in the city.

Grey Mountain Gold - Con artists set up a fake expedition to a supposedly newly discovered lost dwarf hold.

There are also several adventure set in the villages and noble estates in the countryside outside the city.

Even if you chose a different city a lot of these make for great city based adventures set anywhere.

 

[Reynard]

On the Sahdowdark FB group people pointed me toward Into the Cess and Citadel and it looks super interesting.

 

[Voadam]

I had good experiences with the statless Pirate's Guide to Freeport. It has clearly defined city sections, plenty of factions (two organized crime rings, pirate captains, multiple cults, nobles, merchants, unions, mage guild, exploited orc workers, city watch, a fight ring, etc.) and a clear identity as a fantasy D&D pirate/mercantile trade city with a mythos under layer.

No random tables but the themes are clear and the sample material there is interesting enough to stand out after having read it so I felt completely comfortable when running the Freeport Trilogy and the parties went very off script. It informed a lot of riffing for me and was a good background for the module series. It also left enough room to easily customize it to my campaign world and stuff I developed as I went.