Worldbuilding and urban campaigns: principles, techniques, and ideas

[Afrodyte]

I love city-based campaigns. In fact, I'm running one right now.

I know that, for me, urban campaigns play to my strengths because the smaller scale of an urban campaign hit on what I enjoy most about roleplaying: people and relationships. I most enjoy campaigns that allow me to create a sense of intimacy with characters and the setting (which I consider a character). With a city, I can focus most of my activity on that as opposed to making a kingdom or continent which requires attention to the kinds of details that I'm neither good at nor interested in.

One of the things I like to do is to treat a city (or even a neighborhood) almost like a character. Give it a personality. Make it as interesting and multifaceted as any fictional person. If it doesn't matter where I go or who I'm with in a city, then I'm clearly doing something wrong.

But I want to hear from other people who make and run city-based campaigns. Specifically:

• What do you like about urban campaigns?
• How do you like to create a city for an urban campaign?
• What are some principles you like to keep in mind for urban campaigns?
• How does worldbuilding change when you focus on a city-sized scale?
• Which techniques have you found most helpful for building urban settings and campaigns?
• What are some ideas for an urban campaign that you would like to try?

 

[Astrosicebear]

The city is a character... but more importantly its MANY characters. I usually include 5 or so sections of a city, each has its own color scheme, thematic elements, and thus personality.

The Dread Slums are grey and brown, filled with filth, detris and non-hostile undead. It constantly rains what one hopes is actual water, mostly, however, its waste from above... Like everything in this city, the crap falls from the top down. Everything is decaying here, its where the city goes to die.

The Highloft is fabulous in pastel blues and purples and flowing curtain canopies jut out from floating garden villas. The sun seems to always be shining, like a grand grace gifts the Highloft in its warm glow.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The Character concept is a good one.

• Cities & city districts have nicknames; create them and make a history on how they got that name.
• Landmarks - have a few for each district, they can be used for locations.
• Reason for the city to be there, sometimes it is a port, sometimes it's a mine, could be the last fresh water, or a crossroad but there is always a reason.
• Power brokers - who is who in each district. This could be the people with the most respect to the a gang leader.
• Flow - when to people get paid, good come to market, good get smuggled, etc. This is mostly background gossip but does provide when people move about or don't.

 

[Desdichado]

But I want to hear from other people who make and run city-based campaigns. Specifically:

• What do you like about urban campaigns?
• How do you like to create a city for an urban campaign?
• What are some principles you like to keep in mind for urban campaigns?
• How does worldbuilding change when you focus on a city-sized scale?
• Which techniques have you found most helpful for building urban settings and campaigns?
• What are some ideas for an urban campaign that you would like to try?

• Intrigue. Skulduggery. Fantasy noir and crime. The notion that adventure is what happens "out there" in the dungeon, or even the wilderness, while cities are boring is one that I've never understood. In real life, I'm a country boy at heart and a cabin in the mountains on acres of empty land is my dream retirement home, of course, but in gaming I love to have Sam Spade in fantasy drag.
• Eh. I have a few custom tables/generators that I use. I like to map out districts or neighborhoods, but much of the very specific details--names of NPCs, shops, taverns, etc. I make up on the fly as needed. I like to give each city a bit of a twist, too. I have one city, for example, that's split in two by a gigantic cliff. There's Upside and Downside and they operate, in most respects, like two completely different cities that are often at odds with each other. I have one city that has a gigantic slum bricked over with arched rooftops over the narrow streets and alleys so that the entire neighborhood is almost like a bricked up cavern, and the poorest of the poor literally have never seen the sun or been outside of Bricktown. I have a city that's a combination of Green Ronin's Freeport and Lovecraft's Arkham. I have a city that's undergoing a bit of a refugee crisis and is bursting at the seams because of political instability to the north of them. I have one that's built along the side-walls of a gigantic sinkhole. Etc. etc.
• "Don't trust anyone." Or maybe that's because I was just watching The Winter Soldier last night. My city games tend to be a cross between The Matlese Falcon and The Godfather. My characters are rarely heroic, altruistic paladin types. I run them like spy campaigns.
• It doesn't. Ray Winninger, in his excellent series of articles for the Dungeoncraft column a few years ago, made his First Rule of Dungeoncraft--"Don't create more than you have to." This becomes much easier to implement in a city-based campaign (although you still need at least some sketchy information about what's beyond the city walls.
• The best thing for me is creating a custom GM screen with random NPC names on it, random tavern names, and other things like that--for when you don't want to spend time up front mapping every single business and potential NPC that they PCs will meet, but want to feel like you're presenting the world as if it is a living, breathing entity all its own that exists independently of your ability to present it to your players. If you're smooth with it, they'll never know that you're making stuff up as you go. Oh, and keep good notes! There's nothing quite like having your players remember the name of some random serving girl in a tavern who gave you some juicy gossip or hot tip on a crime lord or warehouse heist or whatever but you can't.
• I tend to focus on three themes in urban campaigns. Sometimes I mix them up and a campaign may focus on all three of them, but sometimes just one: 1) Crime and criminal syndicates (The Godfather, 2) Political intrigue (Tom Clancy) and 3) Horror (Dracula from the second half of the book when he's in London, etc.)

 

[edemaitre]

City design

Here are some steps I follow when designing cities, not only for my homebrew, sandbox fantasy setting, but also for modern campaigns:

-Local geography: While most human cities tend to be near rivers and surrounded by arable land, some settlements may be deep in forests, atop or underneath mountains, or at a lake or desert oasis. It will also determine major trade goods available.

-Purpose: Who founded the city and why? Military fortifications, holy sites, and trade outposts may grow into well-rounded cities, but the original intent is usually clear from the most prominent or oldest buildings. A clash between merchants and the military can build over time (see next item)....

-Power centers: How is the city governed? Who are the competing groups in power? If it's a typical European-style feudal society, the local lord may be answerable to a council of merchants or lesser aristocrats. In a theocracy in a world where the gods grant powers, rival deities or sects of the same deity might be represented. Not every cult is evil, but cults tend to be underground, while recognized religions are more acceptable and established.

-Population centers: As you start to divvy up the map into wards, where do the wealthy live vs. the working class and poor? Certain trades and workshops are noisy or stinky, like tanneries, abattoirs, and smithies. However, every neighborhood should have a source of water, a local authority, and a gathering spot (including taverns, guild halls, and temples). Seaports tend to be oriented toward trade and the waterfront, with nicer houses farther or higher up.

-Streets, major buildings, and landmarks: Is it on a grid, or do streets wind? Are certain neighborhoods well-patrolled, but others avoided even by soldiers? What do people do for entertainment? What holidays are important? Every city should have a few things to give it personality -- what do people wear or eat that's different from everywhere else? What do they think of other cities or kingdoms? Is the city in flux, perhaps related to a major war, or is it prospering and growing? What is the level of corruption? In a magical world, there should be one extraordinary feature per major city -- a floating tower, cursed crater, elite order of wyvern riders, etc....

-Non-Player Characters: I usually generate a few to represent each major faction and ward in the city. If I know a party has a Ranger, I'll include a mapping guild, or if it has an Elf, I'll plan for a few fellow expatriates. Lower-level parties may not want to meet the mayor or king, but they could end up before the sheriff or magistrate after a bar brawl. Higher-level P.C.s tend to seek royal audiences first, but they still have to deal with the occasional colorful barmaid, magical school, stable hand, thief, or courtier/spy.

Good luck, and happy gaming!

 

[Ranes]

In scale, big FRP city settings are more akin to towns in real life. They are never big enough to really justify being called cities, and the reasons why are obvious. It would take too much work to create a truly city scale setting. And even if you did all that work, dump it all on players in a game and you risk tedium or players feeling oppressed.

But I like cities and I still want to create the sense of scale. A few years ago, I ran a Ptolus campaign. I started small and grew it slowly. I never used the city map. I always multiplied mundane travel times (without dwelling on them, unless absolutely called for). The PCs soon discovered that most NPCs had never heard of most other NPCs. (The really big players were a different matter but ideas like a middleweight NPC being famous were kept to the neighbourhood district scale.)

As weeks went by, my players got a sense how much was going on in just their locality. By the time they were levels 7-8, they had the impression of being in a really big city, where they could lose themselves, enemies could hide, and new environments could be discovered without anyone thinking it was unusual that they hadn't been encountered before.

As the unfamiliar territory becomes familiar, one of the big differences between and urban campaign and one that spans a greater area is that key NPCs tend to recur more frequently. And the NPCs who become key to the campaign aren't necessarily always the contacts and the heads of organisations. They're the colourful characters you created to liven up a street scene near to where the PCs made their base, about whom the players begin to care. Your players see them frequently or they expect to, so they ask about them when they don't see them. This makes it tempting to make these NPCs hooks for adventures and the opportunity is certainly there to do so. But it's worth keeping some of these NPCs that the players take a shine to away from plot hooks. These regular faces come to represent the normality the players' characters are trying to protect and are most valuable in that role alone.

And running an urban campaign gives you the opportunity to make the familiar seem unfamiliar. Where do all the beggars go at nightfall? They take to the rooftops for safety. There's a whole over-city. But the players don't know that until they do their first rooftop chase or they get a lead on someone they've been searching for, only to discover an entire community or network has been right over their noses all along.

You need lots of NPCs, not stat blocks but characters, too many to make up. There are simply so many character-based encounters in an big urban setting that it's tempting to think the next shopkeeper or street urchin is just another throw-away. After all, the PCs will never meet them again in a city this big. The trouble with that approach is that soon too many of your encounters are just ciphers and your setting begins to lose its character and appeal. I tried to make a short a note about some of the more curious, interesting or annoying people I would see, hear or read about during the week and try to apply them to every nth non-critical NPC the players encountered during the next session. I'd aim to use whatever was on the list every week.

In terms of ideas for an urban campaign I'd like to try, I'd love to do a take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I don't know if I could pull it off though.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Oh, fantasy elements. A lot of cities are just medieval, but in a high fantasy game you would have things like fountains of ever flowing water, street lights of continuous light, animated sidewalks.

 

[Jester David]

I blogged about city building a while back.
Clicky.

Like any campaign the main thing is hooks and making the character connected to the world. The tricky thing is that as stories happen, new problems have to emerge that do not negate the player's actions. But you can't just move to a new area or region.

With an urban campaign you need to know the basics: stores, distances, neighbourhoods, what people do for fun, etc.
You're building a microcosm of a world.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, fantasy elements. A lot of cities are just medieval, but in a high fantasy game you would have things like fountains of ever flowing water, street lights of continuous light, animated sidewalks.

Not to derail the discussion, but since Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, et al defined the high fantasy subgenre, and they don't have any of those kinds of things. Your definition of high fantasy is wrong.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Not to derail the discussion, but since Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, et al defined the high fantasy subgenre, and they don't have any of those kinds of things. Your definition of high fantasy is wrong.

I do not like the definition but as long as it is in an imaginary world with epic plot and characters it is classified as such, as in Harry Potter. The items are in D&D, they should be a possibility in world building and used in city construction, landmarks or wonders.