I'm in the midst of writing up an intrigue heavy urban campaign. If you've read the Gentlemen Bastards by Scott Lynch, that's sort of what I'm aiming for. Combat will feature, as will chases, as will heists and a bunch of additional social interaction stuff that's going to need a rules overlay, and which is not the focus of this post. What I wanted to talk about was gating an urban campaign environment.
In a big dungeon crawl, the various areas of the dungeon that are keyed to PC level are usually gated somehow, and there's an inherent sense of progress when the party makes it to a new part of the dungeon. I'd like to accomplish this for a large urban environment that is designed to be a long term campaign setting, let's say 10 or 12 levels. For simplicity's sake lets use Waterdeep as our default exemplar.
In most campaigns, the city as setting is pretty sandboxy. Players can go where they like, mostly, and talk to whom they like. I want the city to function more like a mega-dungeon. I want the players to have to work to access certain parts of the city, and more importantly, to access new and higher ranks of NPCs. I have some ideas about how to accomplish that, and I'll list them in a moment, but I thought I'd access the breadth and depth of experience here to brainstorm some additional ideas.
Here's the current set of ideas I'm working with
1. Papers Please. Adding some bureaucracy, specifically identity papers and the like as necessary to move around various parts of the city. Start with basic residency papers, and add one other elements to gain access to, for example, the Guild Quarter, or various Noble Enclaves. Not a hard gate, but it would add some complexity, plus a nice use for forgery.
2. Actual Walls. Not my most original idea, but walling off various sections of the city helps keep things discrete, and helps delineate who's allowed to be where. Plus you can add internal guard posts to check papers, wagon contents and whatnot.
3. Social Stratification. This one is the big enchilada. I'd like to use a Reputation stat and mechanic set to gate access to higher ranked individuals and events. Social access and influence is the currency of medieval and Renaissance society, and I'd like characters to make measurable progress and set definite goals about making this happen. You don't just walk into the Baron's Winter Ball, you either have the reputation to get invited on your own, or you manufacture circumstances to finagle an invitation from someone else who has the requisite reputation.
That's what I'm working with so far...
None of this is really intended to railroad the party. It's intended to give measurable goals and non-XP rewards to the social interaction pillar. I have a set of rules in mind to manage social interaction downtime, contact building and favor holding, and some rules to help run large social events as a series of encounters with an obvious teleos. That part is still a work in progress, but I'd like to know what other fanciness people have come up with to make long term urban campaigns work.
In a big dungeon crawl, the various areas of the dungeon that are keyed to PC level are usually gated somehow, and there's an inherent sense of progress when the party makes it to a new part of the dungeon. I'd like to accomplish this for a large urban environment that is designed to be a long term campaign setting, let's say 10 or 12 levels. For simplicity's sake lets use Waterdeep as our default exemplar.
In most campaigns, the city as setting is pretty sandboxy. Players can go where they like, mostly, and talk to whom they like. I want the city to function more like a mega-dungeon. I want the players to have to work to access certain parts of the city, and more importantly, to access new and higher ranks of NPCs. I have some ideas about how to accomplish that, and I'll list them in a moment, but I thought I'd access the breadth and depth of experience here to brainstorm some additional ideas.
Here's the current set of ideas I'm working with
1. Papers Please. Adding some bureaucracy, specifically identity papers and the like as necessary to move around various parts of the city. Start with basic residency papers, and add one other elements to gain access to, for example, the Guild Quarter, or various Noble Enclaves. Not a hard gate, but it would add some complexity, plus a nice use for forgery.
2. Actual Walls. Not my most original idea, but walling off various sections of the city helps keep things discrete, and helps delineate who's allowed to be where. Plus you can add internal guard posts to check papers, wagon contents and whatnot.
3. Social Stratification. This one is the big enchilada. I'd like to use a Reputation stat and mechanic set to gate access to higher ranked individuals and events. Social access and influence is the currency of medieval and Renaissance society, and I'd like characters to make measurable progress and set definite goals about making this happen. You don't just walk into the Baron's Winter Ball, you either have the reputation to get invited on your own, or you manufacture circumstances to finagle an invitation from someone else who has the requisite reputation.
That's what I'm working with so far...
None of this is really intended to railroad the party. It's intended to give measurable goals and non-XP rewards to the social interaction pillar. I have a set of rules in mind to manage social interaction downtime, contact building and favor holding, and some rules to help run large social events as a series of encounters with an obvious teleos. That part is still a work in progress, but I'd like to know what other fanciness people have come up with to make long term urban campaigns work.