City-States of Adventure

[mamba]

Freeport, system neutral

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/28322/pirate-s-guide-to-freeport

There also are some system specific companion books, but not for DCC or 5e

 

[Argyle King]

Freeport, system neutral

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/28322/pirate-s-guide-to-freeport

There also are some system specific companion books, but not for DCC or 5e

What playstyle would you say that Freeport best supports?

 

[mamba]

What playstyle would you say that Freeport best supports?

it’s pretty flexible, it’s a coastal city, with your ‘traditional’ races (plus orcs and goblins), factions, cults, somewhat pirate themed and cosmic horror (Lovecraft) lurking in the background

So not your steampunk / Eberron setting, but ‘classic’ fantasy to Swords & Sorcery would work. Has a Shadow of the Demon Lord companion book and exists for 3e & Pathfinder, that probably defines the range pretty well (companions also exist for C&C and Fate, probably some more too…)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How difficult is it to add some crunch back in of desired?

Incredibly easy. People fold in more systems from OSR games and TSR era D&D all the time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What playstyle would you say that Freeport best supports?

It's pirates + Cthulhu + a somewhat traditional D&D city. It covers a lot of ground.

 

[jdrakeh]

Ravensrook is another excellent system-neutral city setting. It calls to mind cities in fiction such as Sanctuary (Thieves' Guild). It's very well put together and I'd rate it as 5-stars on DriveThruRPG if I could (I can't because publishers can no longer review or rate the products of other publishers thanks to some jerks review bombing competitor's products.).

 

[Argyle King]

@Whizbang Dustyboots

Do you have the 5e version of Ptolus?

If yes, are there any noticeable changes from the original version to that?

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@everyone

Are there any products that focus on a new town (or maybe a frontier fort) that the players could build up over time?

That's something different than my original post, but I was thinking about other products that I may enjoy, and something like that could be fun.

Essentially, the settlement could grow with the characters.

 

[kronovan]

If you're not sure of what system, I'd recommend Kobold Presses' Zobeck: Clockwork City Collection. It's the central city for the Midgard World setting, but its jurisdiction extends beyond the walls of the city. The collectors edition combines the previous Streets of Zobeck, The Zobeck Gazetteer and adds additional content. There's some magitech in it, but it would probably be more in line with your heroic-tier sword & sorcery.

The reason I said If you're not sure of the system, is that the latest collection version is targeted at D&D 5e, but the 2 publications I mentioned in the collection were also previously published for PF1e. As well, as mentioned it's set in Midgard and Kobold Press has published editions of the Midgard Bestiary for 13th Age, Fantasy Age, D&D 4e and a few other TTRPGs I can't recall. With any edition of that bestiary, you can adapt the PF1e or 5e version of Zobeck. Not to mention that the Midgard World setting is terrific, with lots of adventures, campaign books and companions avaialble for it.

 

[Voadam]

I played Rifts a few times, so I'm open to checking it out. I liked a lot of Palladium's stuff. The mechanics of the system were sometimes a bit wonky. But, I still have some friends who would possibly play.

Palladium has a whole Palladium Fantasy RPG line with a ton of region sourcebooks and is very old school, alt 1e D&D in feel. I think Kevin Siembieda who runs palladium wrote Judge's Guild's original Tegel Manor module, he even included a version of it in my PFRPG 1e rulebook.

There is a lot of region sourcebooks for Palladium FRPG but the closest to a city level focus like CSIO would be Book II The Old Ones Sourcebook which is focused on cities but lots of them and not a single city focus, and maybe Island at the Edge of the World (one I don't have so I can't say for sure) which seems comparatively focused on a small area compared to the typical big nation/region sourcebooks, or Book 12 the Great Library of Bletherad which is a slightly less than full city area sort of like doing a sourcebook on a fantasy version of the Great Library of Alexandria (I got it as part of a bundle but have not yet read it).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

@Whizbang Dustyboots

Do you have the 5e version of Ptolus?

If yes, are there any noticeable changes from the original version to that?

I do. It's got a few dual stats for 5E and Cypher, but in practice, that just means a paragraph in the sidebar describing the keywords to use to create the content in Cypher. There's also some additional full page pieces of art, which is nice (presumably because they don't need all the space for 3E stat blocks). As far as I can recall, there's no other significant changes.

There were also a number of new adventures published for the 5E edition, so if you play Ptolus, it's worth picking those up.

They also revised a few of the 3E adventures, like Banewarrens, to 5E. But in a pre-OGL crisis move, they stripped out some of the WotC IP, so there's a spot in the Banewarrens with an obvious umber hulk, but they use the name of a monster from their Planebreaker book. I just said that was the dwarven name for the traditional D&D monster, but it did give me a second of puzzlement.

Are there any products that focus on a new town (or maybe a frontier fort) that the players could build up over time?

That's something different than my original post, but I was thinking about other products that I may enjoy, and something like that could be fun.

Essentially, the settlement could grow with the characters.

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