Best Fleshed Out Cities for use with fantasy TTRPG

[Wolfpack48]

Well, the outer walls, anyway - which are giant slabs of solid stone instead of individual brickwork mortared together. The interior construction was mostly more human scale before mostly razed. And then you've human-built Pavis right outside the walls, which is really a fair-sized town (and huge by Praxian nomad standards) but looks puny by comparison.

Visual aids really help with this one:

That's Pavis with all the buildings there, butting up against part of the Big Rubble's walls. Note where the newer walls and the Pavis temple half-pyramid come up to the giant-built fortifications, and the cultivated farmlands on cleared ground within it.

The overhead view helps too.

That's Pavis' street layout on the left. Big Rubble takes up most of the right map, with all of Pavis being that little dark nub sticking out to the northwest next to the river. You can also see the Troll Breach to the southeast, where they actually managed to collapse part of those monstrous walls.

One of the most distinctive urban areas in all of gaming.

I always loved the Lunar forms needed to obtain entry to the Rubble for all those treasure hunters....

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

"Paperwork" handouts always add to the immersion for me. Although I think they worked best in Paranoia.

I suppose any fairly developed city will grow some kind of bureaucracy over time, even if its a crude one. Lugging around warrants of trade and passes to given districts and proofs of temporary occupancy and whatnot ought to be more common, and building adventures around stealing someone else's documents or finding a good forger for your own has potential. The more involved that stuff gets the more the pen really does become mightier than the sword.