D&D 5E What Makes a Good Urban Adventure?

[THEMNGMNT]

I love all kinds of adventures: wilderness hexcrawls, dungeon delves, urban. I am preparing to run my group through an urban adventure currently, and here are a few challenges that might come up:

1. Homogeneous enemies. Let's face it, it would be very bizarre for a Beholder or Dinosaur or Lich to suddenly appear in the middle of the street in Waterdeep. The vast majority of the enemies are going to be human thugs, assassins, etc. Some players may find that boring.

2. Face time. In urban adventures, the Bard, Paladin or whomever the face of your party is will dominate the majority of play because urban adventures tend to revolve around plots, politics and intrigue. Right in the face character's wheelhouse. You need to be aware of this and have things for everyone else to do as well.

I play D&D because I like monsters, so my urban adventures are filled with monsters. Do beholders appear in the streets? Yes, yes they do. Is it realistic? Within the framework of a fantasy game where players can fight literally hundreds of combats in the span of a couple months without so much as a permanent scar--yup, I think so.

 

[Soul Stigma]

I play D&D because I like monsters, so my urban adventures are filled with monsters. Do beholders appear in the streets? Yes, yes they do. Is it realistic? Within the framework of a fantasy game where players can fight literally hundreds of combats in the span of a couple months without so much as a permanent scar--yup, I think so.

I don't go as far as a beholder in the streets, but one operating from the sewers of a city is absolutely a possibility in my game.

 

[jayoungr]

Bumping this thread because I found a cool article that seems relevant.

Interesting Urban Locations

There are quite a few books and source materials out there to generate cities of all sizes and some of these even include the amenities or businesses that exist within the urban area. These are great skeletons to build details onto. You have to know that there are three bakeries in the city...

gnomestew.com

 

[Guest 6801328]

A dungeon under the city. (In answer to the title of the thread.)