Help with a city interlude, please?

[Hand of Evil]

If this is their home city have each character make up X number of NPC that they know and give them to you. You can do the same with locations.

These are people & places they have come to know in their free time.

Now change a few of them. This is what the players do not know, things like the magic supply shop owner is a leading member of the wizards guild and secretly looks for adventurer. Or that the Headless Rat Tavern is the local meeting place for spys.

What this does is allow you to send them to locations or people that one of the players knows. The players interact with the city, now you can build relationships with your game and the NPCs and places.

Another thing is to make your city a living city. Look at your local paper and take stories and place them into your game. They do not have anything to do with your game (somethimes they can) just shows that things happen. If your local news reports a fire, then have one in your city.

 

[Wampus Cat]

City Interlude

A simple tool to help meet your players' desires is to simply ask them. Email is great for this. Between sessions, just send them individual messages asking what they would like to do when they reach the city. They're sure to have shopping lists, and this would give you specific ideas of the NPC's you need to create (get Jamis Buck's generators for this). Add a little flavor with some set-piece encounters based on the town itself and you're good to go. Good luck!

 

[Buttercup]

Thanks to all of you. I'm getting lots of good ideas and advice here! More is always welcome, and appreciated.

 

[Dragonjester]

My favourite aspect of city adventures is the variety of encounter settings. You can have encounters that start as a clandestine meeting in an underground sewer system and end in a precarious chase across the rooftops 3 storeys high above the cobblestone streets.

Just stating the obvious I guess.

 

[Old One]

Hand of Evil Hits Home Run!

HoE has a great idea...

Let your players provide you with some good background stuff. I also agree with several other posters that metion "People" as the key element to a city adventure - interesting characters can make a city truly come alive!

Along those lines:

(1) Politicians: Who holds the political power in the city? How happy are they going to be that their fair city is overrun with foriegn agents? How unhappy are they going to be with the PCs for bringing the foriegn agents to town? Is their benefactor politically important or motivated by political considerations? Perhaps he wants the city to go to war with the Empire and used the party to retrieve the proof he needed about the Empire's collusion with the elves in the slave trade - OR - perhaps he is will use the proof to blackmain the Empire and extort money from them.

(2) Entertainers: Who are the "rock stars" of the city? Which bards or playwrights or jugglers are the hot item right now? Perhaps one is related to a PC and adoring fans try to use the PC to gain access to the object of their worship. Perhaps one of them develops a crush on one of the PCs.

(3) Family Involvement: Do the PCs have family in the city? If so, who are they? Perhaps a family member is in trouble with the law or owes back taxes. Maybe granny is behind on her rent and the evil landlord wants to throw her out...he is not very nice but he has the law on his side! Maybe the family home is in a prime location and a local merchants group wants to build a new bazaar on the site...the family refuses to sell, so the merchant's start using strong arm tactics.

(4) Ordinary People: Who are the street sweeper, lamplighters and vermin control people? IMC, the streets of a certain town are lit by Continual Flame spells, yet, each night members of the Lamplighters and Street Sweepers Guild Local 179 travel through the city and take leather covers off of the lamps, allowing the illumination to shine forth. Why? Because the guild got a long-term contract (300 years) to provide lamplighting services and enforced the terms of the contract even after the city switched to magic lighting!

Look for little details - sounds, smells, specialty cuisine - that makes the city experience come alive!

Good luck,

Old One

 

[Darklone]

Heyho

Hey all!

I think it's a shame to post behind the Old One since he probably said everything important already... But I yet have to add some things.

Since my players usually have no idea what to do in a city, they walk around. They look here and there and get ambushed or highjacked or ... whatever. Lose cash by shopping ... bought somethign from a nice little gnome that suddenly looked very different when it ran away... as well as the thing they bought... I drift off.

NPCs. The others said it already. Build NPCs. Look for Jeff Ibachs Page, there's a help to make them livelike. Build a lot of NPCs for random encounters in the street. A merchants wagon with a broken wheel. Two merchants haggling... a horse going crazy. A thief running away. A beggar whining for coppers. Two small children frmo a farm outside who sell flowers cause their parents are sick at home.

A city lives. All those encounters does not have to do anything with the PCs, but it lights up the experience. Not everything that happens in a city has something to do with the players. But there are thousands of people there who are not simply paperboys who watch the heros.

Players who like to dive into the alleyways and disappear in the shadows will love it. Thieves (even NPCs) could be tempted to interact with those strangers in one or the other way. (perhaps the local thieves guild feels embarassed by those agents). Have someone steal that thing everyone is looking for when the players are fighting against some agents. Have someone else steal it again. Confuse your players by setting NPCs against each other. ACTIVELY. There's nothing like a group of players who watch in awe as a werewolf rips apart a longtime villain they were trying to nail.

Hope this helps a bit.

May the sun shine always on the dagger in your back.

Darklone

 

[Warrior Poet]

I second Barsoomcore’s suggestion about a list of NPCs.

Make up a big list of names, just names, from the King (or mayor or whatever suzerain you have in place) down to a few key beggars on the street. The PCs will never run into everyone, but you’ll always be ready when they go off in a direction you weren’t focusing on to talk to someone you hadn’t previously detailed. You don’t need stats on these NPCs - how they act, their motivations, and the like, will be what you ad lib, which you will learn to do well, especially after handling a city setting for a while.

To Old One’s list I would add yer basic Criminal Element™: a Thieves’ Guild is a marvelous thing, and a great way to generate lots of story elements: gambling, extortion, robbery, loansharking, smuggling, all the classics. Ah, there you go: Darklone mentioned the thieves – thumbs up. And maybe the Thieves’ Guild is a little miffed to find out outside agents are coming into THEIR town and putting the squeeze on someone without going through the Guild first. Could be an underworld rumble developing …

Great city locations:
Center of Government
Warehouse/Dock district
Churches/Temples/Cathedrals
Slums
Merchant row
Walls
University/Mage guild
Favorite watering hole (let the PCs try out a few – they’ll eventually settle on one they really like)
Wealthy district
Theater/Opera/Auditorium
Public execution square
Water source
Sewers
Burial areas/Ossyrariums

Great city events:
Holidays/Parades/Festivals
Plague (one of the all time worst things to happen to the city)
Fire (also REALLY nasty in a city, especially one where wood is the dominant building material)
Economic boom and bust
Annual wererat convention
Assassination
Romance
Earthquake/Hurricane/Stunning event of nature

Good luck. The city is an awesome adventure venue, and I mean awesome in both senses of the word: something inspiring awe and something very exciting.

Warrior Poet

 

[Darklone]

city again

Well Warrior Poet...

Making a list of NPC names and play them ad hoc...
That's exactly what I don't like too much. But it's a matter of taste.

The game is more player centered if you do it that way, NPCs are defined in their reaction towards the players. But if my players enter a city of 40000 inhabitants, they are NOT the centre. NPC interaction is my aim, I want the players watch the scene. The city is alive, not because the players are there, they may be a part of it, not the most important one usually.

The thieves guilds As proposed: Let them get a rumble with those agents!

May the sun shine always on the dagger in your back

Darklone

 

[Buttercup]

Thanks, everybody! This is exactly the kind of help I was hoping for.

Darklone, I love the idea of a certain thingy getting stolen and re-stolen, sending the PCs on a wild goose chase. You're exactly right about the PCs not being the center of the action. IMC, they are trying to lay a bit low, since they don't know exactly why they are being hunted, and they're only level 2. It only makes sense for them to be anonymous in the big city.

I think I'll have a festival, some robberies, maybe a conspiracy to poison members of the watch by person or persons unknown, and perhaps a few other things.

Also, one of my players needs to find a necromancer to train him. I was planning on turning that into an ugly little incident. See, this high level necromancer is totally crazy, and he's animated some things and then lost control of 'em....

 

[Warrior Poet]

Darklone,

But if my players enter a city of 40000 inhabitants, they are NOT the centre. NPC interaction is my aim, I want the players watch the scene. The city is alive, not because the players are there, they may be a part of it, not the most important one usually.

Well said!

Warrior Poet