City Supplement - Your favorite?

[der_kluge]

I really like CSIO, but the whole town has a "LE" feel to it. As such, there are a lot of seedy places in it (the place where you can torture slaves is my favorite). It won't work for everyone because of that. It works best if you can use it "as-is" but that carries some amount of baggage.

I'm not familiar with Bard's Gate, so I can't speak to it. It is the default city in use for Rappan Athuk (I believe), and is the default city near the Tomb of Abysthor, which is sort of a corollary product to RA. So, it might serve your purposes well in this regard.

I don't own Ptolus, but Ptolus is more of a campaign setting in a city. It's a HUGE book. So, if you're looking for just a city that you're characters can come back to to rest and buy stuff, Ptolus probably isn't for you. It would require way too much work on your part to integrate and use efficiently.

Freeport is sort of a Pirate port-city, so if that's what you're looking for, it might work well. It's got a lot of fluff (as opposed to crunchy bits) so if that's not your thing, it might not suit your needs.

Bluffside is a great city*, with a lot of detail, and fleshed out NPCs. As others have said, it's sort of "unique" in that it resides atop a large cliff overlooking the ocean. The city is built atop ruins, and does have some goofy races in them, including a flying race, a lizard-man type race, and some variant gnomes called steam gnomes. I personally use Bluffside regularly simply for the different locations (Called POIs or Places of Interest) and it has TONS of NPC stats in the back for all the different shop owners. As an added bonus, most of the shops have added plot hooks for each of them.


So, my recommendation would be to use Bard's Gate (it sounds like it will serve your needs the best), and pick up something like Bluffside to fill out the different shop-keepers.


*personal bias - I was one of the main authors on Bluffside, and was the architect of the original idea behind the product.

 

[trancejeremy]

I personally use Bluffside regularly simply for the different locations (Called POIs or Places of Interest) and it has TONS of NPC stats in the back for all the different shop owners. As an added bonus, most of the shops have added plot hooks for each of them.

Yeah, I think Bluffside really set the bar for how locations should be described. It's a shame that no one really has followed that. Besides the plot hooks, it has a list of regulars.

 

[ghul]

Castle Zagyg Vol 1., Yggsburgh, by Gary Gygax

Ghul

 

[Maldin]

Many people have already mentioned two of my favorites, the City of Greyhawk boxed set (although the map was a bit disappointing, the books were great), and the Cities of Harn supplement. A rather different kind of city, and one that people may not think to mention... I rather like "The Rock of Bral" supplement (Spelljammer) alot. Another "bizarre" city (and admittedly a bit hard to wade through) is "Sigil" (Planescape).

Denis, aka "Maldin"
============================
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more! Including the new official map of the City of Greyhawk

 

[Treebore]

For the record, I think everyone is making good suggestions. To throw even another one out there Lost City of Barakus is a module AND a city, called Endhome. With greyscale maps and a fair amount of detail in encounters, but relatively lite on the city intself.

Si it really depends on what you want. Do you want most everything done for you? Then Bard's Gate or CSIO (and it is more evil than good). Do you want a modest amount of stuff done for you but plenty of room to add your own touches? Then just about everything everyone else has mentioned. CSIO and BG aren't completely done either, just enough that you'll probably not feel much need/motivation to add your own stuff.

I think I own pretty much everything everyone has mentioned (except City I, III, and IV), and my opinion is you really can't go wrong. Since you seem unsure about staying with Freeport you may want to go to Bards Gate. I mean, if you have or intend to get everything for Freeport, stick with it. There is plenty to play with. then if you want more city stuff later expand to Bard's Gate and any of the others people have mentioned.

Freehaven (?Freeport? Free something!), the Green Ronin City Quarters series is turning out real well too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Freehaven (?Freeport? Free something!), the Green Ronin City Quarters series is turning out real well too.

Free City of Liberty, IIRC.

 

[Treebore]

Thats right, Liberty.

 

[Frost]

Thanks again, folks... very useful indeed.

Castle Zagyg Vol 1., Yggsburgh, by Gary Gygax

This has been mentioned a few times and I'm sort of a sucker for old school stuff (hence my interest in Necro Games).

Can someone tell me why he/she likes this supplement? (Previous posts have mentioned it, but not said why).

Also, is this 3e or C&C?

In case you're curious, I'm still debating between Bard's Gate and CSIO. Both seem to be "plug-n-play," like I want. Like I mentioned, this will be the home base for a Rappan Athuk campaign, so I'm looking for a place with plenty of NPCs to help the PCs... i.e., some NPC clerics of high enough level to raise the dead.

I'm looking for crunch, not fluff, and given the previous posts, it sounds like I'm on the right path.

Thanks again!

 

[Turjan]

Yggsburgh is for C&C. If you need d20 NPC stats, you will have to do them yourself. It's not a bad city, either. You just need to put some more work in.

You can look whether Bard's Gate contains enough stuff for you by looking at the building list here.

 

[bowbe]

At the risk of being overwhelmed by emailings or de-railing the thread any...

For the folks who have Bards Gate there is info on the necro mssg boards on how to contact me and get even more supplemental materials if you have the product ID. Go check the threads under BG and you can find the info on how to get the additional product support.

Our webmaster has sort of gone missing. Nobody has seen or heard from greenpiece in some time (has anyone over here heard from him?) we are sorta worried! Thus I'm sort of handling product support for BG personally till the webmaster situation gets squared away.

Bard's Gate is fairly close to the Stoneheart Mountain Dungeon (Tomb Of Absythor) and not horribly far from RA... plus there are portals there and about to get from BG to RA. BG is sorta the center for Necromancer Games' Bermuda Triangle of Evil. The other point of the triangle being the much talked about (and much played) but as yet unpublished Sword of Air. Thus BG is very much intended for use as a home base for the two published adventures of the triangle (RA, TOA). Many of the locals have lore about both places, but their "rumors" are gleaned not from charts but from getting to know them through RP.

Interestingly one of the main developers of Lankhmar edited a great deal of BG for us (Anthony Pryor)... I hear Anthony is doing some really cool things right now that I am not at liberty to discuss!

To shill some other great city books however... CSIO is very good (at being very EVIL!). Thus if you have a party of less than good aligned characters in your gaming group, CSIO works very well.

Freeport is great (better than great) for seafaring adventures. I love the original chaosium Sanctuary product and used it for years. I had the City of Greyhawk boxed set too and I agree about the map but really dig the content of the books.

Ptolus is simply awesome but has so much of its own going on as far as campaigns and adventures that using it as a base for non Ptolus stuff seems a waste of very good Ptolus. (If that makes sense?) I teased Sue all weekend at Gen Con about what a great imagination she has and what an awesome job she did writing the thing! She still swears that it was all Monte's idea but I think we all know better right?

Bluffside is also very cool and very original.

Yggsburg is awesome for C&C and the old AD&D players that need a great city penned by the man himself. As others have said, using it for 3.5 requires a touch of work if your a slave to "perfect 3.x edition stat blocks." I'm not so much one of those so it works well as an alt city for my guys to visit from time to time.

I'm not so much the big fan of Waterdeep and never have been. I guess the whole bit about "such and such NPC will always be at least 5-10 levels higher than the highest level PC in your group" bit they used to include turned me off of it and FR in general and always did. I dig why other people love it though, because I loved all the computer games like Shadows of Ahm ect. ect.

Anyhow, sorry for any derailments and hope that this helped.

Peace

Casey